World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade is the first expansion to the highly acclaimed MMORPG World of Warcraft. Unless you haven’t been following the Internet, you should know that World of Warcraft (or better known as WoW) has over 9 million subscribers worldwide! That’s amazing compared to, say, Lineage, who at one time boosted barely 3+ million subscribers across the globe.

“The Burning Crusade” adds in a myriad of new features to the game. From two new races, flying mounts, new cities and zones, an extended level cap, and even an entire new sprawling continent jammed packed with quests, dungeons, and adventure. Nearly a month after release, players are still working through all of the new content.

First off, the expansion includes two brand new races: the Blood Elves and the Draenei. The Blood Elves added a much needed “pretty humanoid” race to the Horde while the Draenei added a “monster” type race to the Alliance. This is really helping even the scales between the two factions’ population.

The Blood Elves are a wonderfully polished race that once again shows up in a Warcraft sequel. They were first introduced during Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne and have been reintroduced into another Warcraft expansion, this time for WoW. They are your standard elfish type character, pointy ears and all. They can play a ton of classes, including the previous Alliance only class “Paladin” and have a few pretty neat racial abilities. As a race, they are probably the coolest in the game, especially considering they are sipping drinks and throwing parties while the scourge are attempting to invade their land.

Pastel colors beld well together as the last bits of land held by the Blood Elves come under threat from the scourge.

Speaking of land, the Blood Elves get two brand new zones for new players. Eversong Woods greets all new players and takes them to around level ten or eleven while the Ghostlands is predominantly for the entire Horde and takes a character to about level twenty.

Eversong Woods, as a zone, is amazing. The quests are plentiful and the rewards are very nice. The amount of color from everything is just absolutely stunning. The trees, the ground, oh! It’s wonderful. Ghostlands, on the other hand, is not as pretty and colorful but is unique in its own right. In the Ghostlands you can easily go from level ten to level twenty in a few hours of play and, when you’re done, you’ll have some absolutely amazing item rewards!

Of course, Silvermoon City shouldn’t go without a mention. It’s a work of virtual art both visually and lore-wise. So much attention was paid to detail that it’s just shocking on so many levels how wonderful the city is. As you look around the city you notice how mana flows freely all around and silks are draped everywhere. The colors blend together like a pile full of leaves meeting cool autumn breeze. That, of course, is the outside layer of Silvermoon City. If you look closer you’ll see so much more.

For instance, while there is so much beauty everywhere, those who look close will see through it and notice the little touches that tell the full story of the Blood Elves. The food is sparse on the tables, citizens who rebel are quickly mind controlled into submission, and leper Gnomes work away in sweat shops beneath the city. These small touches paint so much more for the Blood Elves and their struggle to survive and look tough so that the Horde will help protect them.

Of course, you can not forget the Draenei. The praise for the Blood Elf starting zone applies just as well to the Draenei starting zone. The colors, the quests, the story, and everything else with the Draenei is perfectly executed. From the Exodar crashing to saving the Draenei from an invasion from Kael’thas… it’s just a wonderful experience. The Exodar shouldn’t go without mention; while it utilizes a very sci-fi theme, it’s also a very pretty capital city.

If I were to launch any complaints about the new zones, it would be that when you are finished, you’re thrown back to the old content (which is nowhere near as nice as the newer stuff). Thankfully you can avoid the lower level instances and certain NPCs guide you to your rightful place within the old content. You can really tell that Blizzard took what they knew from feedback on the old starting zones and applied it directly to these new zones.

From Hellfire Ramparts to Zangarmarsh to Shattrath City, the sights of Outland are wonderful.

New races aren’t the only thing that came with the expansion. The biggest addition of all, Outland, is without a doubt one of the coolest zones I’ve ever witnessed in an MMORPG. You expect it to be great, but no matter how high your expectations are they are completely blown away when you step through The Dark Portal. It’s almost as if WoW was reborn into an entirely new game.

Hellfire Peninsula, the first zone you reach, is pretty barren. However, the terrain is constantly active. All around you see lava spewing from vents and the terrain is really broken, like it should be. The enemies are very well rendered and the quests are plentiful. Looking up to the sky you see the twisting nether flowing about freely, holding together the various zones of Outland as they float around in space. Delving deeper into zones like Zangarmarsh the same color the illuminates the starting zones once again returns and flourishes all around.

The new instances are fantastically done as well. The new 25 man raid instances really help more casual players attempt harder content while most instances being shortened in length helps everyone get in, get their loot, and get out within a reasonable time. The only negative thing that can be said about the new instances is some of the attunement quests (quests that allow you to enter certain instances) are rather lengthy. With great rewards comes a great price, so even lengthy attunements have a purpose.

Looks and instances isn’t everything, the new zones contain hundreds of new quests. So many quests in fact that most players reach level seventy with one or more zones completely untouched! The quest rewards are magnificent as well, although you may find some quests giving rewards later on that previous quests had already gave better.

Speaking of quests, here is about my only gripe with the expansion. With the new zones, the stunning new textures, and all of the new quests… you’re still getting the same of what you had before. The new quests are exactly what you were doing before, there is just more of them. Sure some quests involve some unique aspects like flying through the air, but that isn’t exactly massively new.

Of course, the graphics engine didn’t really get a boost either. We’re still looking at about the same thing as we did 2 years ago, only this time around it’s much more polished. The colors, textures, and everything else is done fantastically well.,though this isn’t some bleeding-edge state of the art DX10 game. I’m not so sure if that’s a mark against it, since the graphics are completely acceptable to me and I rather my MMORPG run fine on most any decently modern system then run only on the newest and best.

While the graphics engine may be dated, it can still produce some stunning effects while still being light on the system resources.

Something that shocked me was how well flying mounts worked out. Flight is rather smooth and they are very easy to obtain. The other various features, like Jewelcrafting, worked out really well as well. Socketed items, new recipes, and everything else came out smooth and polished.

Outside of the new content, one of the things that shocked me was how smooth the launch was. The original launch for World of Warcraft was rocky and constantly down. The expansion didn’t see many problems and most of the servers remained up while everyone rushed to see the new content. The launch was extremely smooth for a game as large was World of Warcraft. Even the availability of the game was smooth. People lined up, sure, but with a little exploration most any player could find the game. The direct download option, offered recently, made the expansion available to anyone with a credit card

Overall, I find “The Burning Crusade” to be, without a doubt, as near to perfect of an expansion as someone could ask. It doesn’t stray from the working formula, it didn’t try to change the game, it gave what player’s asked for. They asked for more instances, more accessibility, and for the Horde to have a race that doesn’t eat nothing but raw meat and Blizzard answered. WoW’s got a bright future ahead if each expansion can maintain this quality, although let’s try changing it up just a little bit from now on.

Score

5 / 5
Go out and get it!

Positives

Negatives

  • Vibrant new zones.
  • More casual friendly instances.
  • Smooth launch.
  • Everything is polished.
  • More of the same.

Bottom Line

As perfect as you can possibly get, "The Burning Crusade" builds ontop of World of Warcraft's excellent MMORPG formula and does a great job of expanding the gameplay. If you play WoW you should get this expansion without a doubt! If you don't play now is a great time to start.

Be sure to check out all of our expansion content at our "The Burning Crusade" portal!


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Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

About The Author

Get in the bush with David "Xerin" Piner as he leverages his spectacular insanity to ask the serious questions such as is Master Yi and Illidan the same person? What's for dinner? What are ways to elevate your gaming experience? David's column, Respawn, is updated near daily with some of the coolest things you'll read online, while David tackles ways to improve the game experience across the board with various hype guides to cool games.

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