Wrath of the Lich King on Warcraft

In 2006, Blizzard Entertainment made the somewhat audacious statement that the developer was targeting annual expansions for its massively popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft. The news was smirk-inducing, considering it came nearly a year after the game's first expansion--The Burning Crusade--was announced and just a few weeks after the add-on had entered alpha testing. However, thanks in large part to ample and substantive in-game content updates, Blizzard has had no problem growing its rabid fan base past 10 million subscribers.

Needless to say, WOW's second expansion--Wrath of the Lich King--breezed through The Burning Crusade's one-year anniversary in January on a wind as frigid as the add-on's fictional locale, Northrend. However, as the summer approaches, Lich King may be ready to emerge from Blizzard's cooker. Enthusiast fan site WOW Insider reports today that "anonymous sources" claim the game has entered alpha, and "various players are being invited to check it out, under a strict [nondisclosure agreement]."