World of Warcraft – Memorable Moments

World of Warcraft’s insistence on being a theme park MMORPG didn’t prevent it from generating a great deal of memorable moments. And while some of them may only be memorable to you and your guild, others have managed to make the news or simply resonate with a great deal of people. This PC Gamer article lists six such big events. For example:

The Wrathgate

In the early years of WoW, its greatest strength was the world of Azeroth and the way it let players tell their own stories within it. Narrative beats did happen, but they were disorganized and scattered. One day you were fighting trolls, the next it was liches. There was only a loose plot to follow, and it was only through the endless pages of text accompanying each quest. Once in a while you might get a short, inconsequential in-game cutscene with some stiff animation. But that all changed in Wrath of the Lich King.

To defeat Arthas and put an end to his undead invasion, the Horde and Alliance join forces for an all-out assault on the front gate leading into Icecrown Citadel. Both factions mustered an enormous army and the battle played out in an epic four-minute cutscene (embedded above). Just as Arthas arrives for a final showdown, however, the whole fight is interrupted by a group of undead Forsaken supposedly under the command of Slyvanas Windrunner. The Scourge have a bone to pick with both the living and their fellow undead ruled by Arthas, so they try to kill both sides in one swoop, slinging caskets of poison onto the battlefield that force both sides into a full retreat—but not without enormous losses.

It’s basically World of Warcraft’s take on the Red Wedding from Game of Thrones: a shocking betrayal followed by awful scenes of countless soldiers dying in agony. The Wrathgate is easily WoW’s most memorable cutscene.