Burning Crusade - Burnin' Down the House!

The Basics

World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade is an expansion pack to the original World of Warcraft game. It requires the original World of Warcraft to work, and is not a stand alone product. In fact, even if both are bought together, it will take a significant investment of time in World of Warcraft before your character will have access to many of the features added by Burning Crusade.

Additionally, World of Warcraft, and this expansion, Burning Crusade are online games. Playing the game will require an internet connection (broadband) and paying a subscription fee in addition to buying the boxed game ($14.99/mo., with discounts on the monthly fee if you pay in 3 or 6 month increments, with the balance due at the beginning of your subscription period).

World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft (or WOW as it is commonly known), is one of the leading MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role playing games) – other well known games in a similar genre are EverQuest/EverQuest 2, Dark Ages of Camelot, and Asheron's Call. Basically you play an adventurer in a fantasy world who advances through completing quests, killing monsters, and in some games (or just some divisions of some of the games) killing other player's characters.

The characters in WOW are fairly cartoony looking and the humor and many of the storylines unabashedly trade on the sort of campy, Monty Python-esque mood that this sets. In contrast, the characters and universe depicted in EverQuest's graphics strives to be more polished/realistic looking while still presenting a high fantasy universe.

WOW takes place in a fantasy universe called Azeroth which is split into two main continents (the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor). It's primarily a high fantasy style game (swords and spellcasting), but with "modern" technology like guns, grenades, death rays and such introduced primarily via the engineering skill.

WOW Universe

When you first install WOW and log online to play, you'll have to choose your server. You choices for servers are broken down into a couple of categories, consisting of PvP (player v. player), PvE (player v. everything) aka "normal", RP (role playing), or RP/PvP. Once you choose your server, you create your character to begin playing.

When a player starts a character in WOW the first thing they have to choose is if they will play on the side of the "Horde" (generally regarded as the evil side – they say "misunderstood") or on the side of the "Alliance." Based on the side that you choose to play on, next you choose what race of character you want to play. Each of the races has its own history, culture, and abilities.

Horde characters may be Orcs, Undead, Tauren, Trolls or, now with the expansion offered by Burning Crusade, Blood Elves (more on this later in the review). Horde characters are loosely allied under the direction of Orcs.

Alliance characters may be Human, Dwarf, Gnome, Night Elf or, now with the expansion offered by Burning Crusade, Draenei (more on this later). Alliance characters are loosely organized under the direction of the Dwarves.

After a player has chosen their race, the next thing they choose is a class. Each race allows a selection of different classes. Some examples of classes are hunters (ranged weapon user, such as bows, crossbows, guns and thrown weapons and they have animal companions/pets), warriors (prototypical weapon using, plate armor wearing, difficult to kill), mages (spellcasters), warlocks (magic users that rely on demon powers/summoning demons), priests (healers) and many others. You can also do some modifications to the appearance of your character at the time that you create them (hair type, facial looks, accessories).

Progressing through the game, you advanced via completing quests and killing monsters. Your can also choose professions/skills for your character to learn. These professions/skills might be leather working, alchemy, engineering, mining, skinning, tailoring, enchanting, herbalism and more. Your character could progress to level 60 with the original WOW. With the expansion, Burning Crusade, your character may advance to level 70 (allowing you 10 more levels of gameplay).

Aside from making progress in levels or skills, your character could acquire Honor. Honor was gained by killing other players. On a PvP server, that could occur anywhere in the game. On a PvE server, you had to enter a special "PvP" area or instance such as Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, Alterac Valley, and now with Burning Crusade a new area called Eye of the Storm. You spent Honor to buy better gear (gear mostly increased your character's statistics).

In the original WOW, once you reached level 60 you could do "endgame material" – quests which were intended for 60th level characters and might require you to be 60 before being able to get the quest assigned to you. You could also participate in "endgame raids" – raids are groups of more than 6 people working together.

Raiding groups can range in number from 6 to 40 people, maximum. Raids can last anywhere from approximately an hour up to 14 hour epic journeys (or more). A typical raid would last approximately 2 hours. Often players participating in raids would communicate outside of WOW using programs like Ventrilo or TeamSpeak to organize their efforts.

Burning Crusade Expansion Features

The new game development introduces a "Dark Portal" that opens up a land to players that was closed years before (in the history of the WOW universe). There were people trapped on the other side of the portal during the time it was closed. The portal leads to an area called "Outland." Outland is populated chiefly by demons and their allies known collectively as the Burning Legion – the new enemy of both the Horde and the Alliance.

New Races

Two new races were introduced with Burning Crusade.

Draenei (new Alliance race)

Literally meaning "exiled ones" in their own language, the Draenei are a small faction of the magically gifted eredar race. The leader of the Burning Legion, Sargeras, seduced most of the eredar into joining his cause and promptly turned them into demons. Only one of the three main leaders of the eredar race, Velan, saw through Sargeras' tactics.

Velan gathered those eredar he could together and fled into exile, helped by the naaru (energy beings who converted the Draenei to be followers of the Light) and finding safety for a time with shamanistic orcs. Unfortunately, the orcs were corrupted by one of the now demonic eredar leaders and attacked the Draenei, killing over 80% of them. Only a small group of Draenei survive and now seek allies in their battle against the Burning Legion.

Physically, the Draenei are a large race with blue skin. They also have sort of beard-like tentacley growths along their jaw lines (males and females both have them, though the males' are more pronounced). They also sport horns on the top/sides of their heads and tails. Several subspecies of Draenei exist, twisted and warped by the dark magic they've come up against. Draenei are naturally inclined to magical classes (such as mage or priest, though Draenei can be warriors, paladins, hunters, priests, shamans, or mages).

Blood Elves (new Horde race)

The Blood Elves are a group of high elves that were exiled. After their exile, this group used a vial of sacred water (stolen from the Well of Eternity) to create a fountain called Sunwell. They lived in their city, Silvermoon, fairly isolated for thousands of years, but were then attacked and all but wiped out in the Third War. Sunwell was destroyed, revealing that the blood elves that lived there had become addicted to the magic power Sunwell gave them.

The blood elves were gathered up by the last of their royal line, Prince Kael'thas. He allied with the naga (half-reptile/half-human) and because of that was condemned to death by the humans, when they found out about it. The naga set them free and led them to Outland where they met a renegade demon, Illidan Stormrage (the Betrayer). In order to survive, Kael'thas agreed that he would serve the demon in return for help for his followers.

The blood elves embraced demonic magic as a replacement for the magic they had been lacking after the destruction of Sunwell. This practice caused the Alliance to shun then, forcing the blood elves to look to the Horde for help.

Blood elves are physiologically the same as high elves. They're about the same height as humans, but slimmer. Blood elves can be paladins, hunters, rogues, priests, mages, or warlocks.

New Levels and Gear

Burning Crusade's release brought an increase to the level cap. In the original WOW, characters reached a level cap at 60. Now, with Burning Crusade, characters can progress to level 70.

Important to note, the first quests you will do in the Burning Crusade expansion will earn you gear similar to the best gear it was possible to acquire through endgame play in original WOW. This is helpful to players who may have hit 60 in WOW and stopped playing and now want to come back – they will not be at a significant disadvantage in beginning to play the Burning Crusade expansion.

New Quests

In the original WOW game, a lot of campy humor and referencing back to other computer game classics were present in the quest assignments. References to Legend of Zelda, Zork and other such games were common.

The quests that have been released with the Burning Crusade expansion do not have the "goofy" aspect of previous quests. They're more storyline intensive, and make more sense in the genre of WOW. The emphasis has also shifted from Horde v. Alliance to Horde and Alliance working together against Demonic Forces (the Demonic Forces were introduced to the game with the Burning Crusade expansion).

On a gameplay note, the new Outland area is designed for raids to require at most 20 people (a 50% reduction from the 40 person raids that existed in the original WOW).

New Dungeons

Two new dungeons were released in the original WOW area (Azeroth). The two new dungeons are the Caverns of Time and Karazahn.

Each subsection of Outlands, seven in all, has a new dungeon – resulting in 15 or more new dungeons being released. Most of these dungeons are intended for 5 person groups. You can enter the areas with less than 5 people, but it will be quite difficult to progress without a full party.

Cavern of Time

This is probably the most interesting of the new dungeons, conceptually. The idea is that your character and their companions actually travel back through time to take part in the battles that shaped history. The question of paradox is avoided by the fact that the quests assigned for the area are to go back and insure that events of historical importance take place as they have to, to preserve the world.

Flying Mounts

In the original version of WOW characters were able to buy mounts at level 40. Most classes of characters have to pay for riding lessons and buy the mount. The types of mounts vary by the race you are playing. The advantage of mounts is primarily in the speed you travel while crossing the game terrain. A base mount increased your speed by 60%.

Flying mounts were released with Burning Crusade. Base flying mounts are available once you reach level 70. They increase your speed by 160% and allow you to fly, letting you travel straight lines over terrain obstacles that you would otherwise have to circle around. Epic flying mounts are also available; epic flying mounts are only available once you've spent significant resources increasing your riding skill. Epic flying mounts increase your speed by 280% in the air. However, flying mounts can only be used in Outlands.

New Skill

A new crafting skill, Jewelcrafting, was released with Burning Crusade. The Jewelcrafting skill allows players to create jewelry and trinkets that may aid their characters, or be sold or given to other characters to help them. Additionally, jewelcrafters can cut gems to use in socketed items.

Socketed items – these gain importance at the higher levels. Weapons, armor, and other items can have "sockets" in them that you can fit with special jewels. The jewels can be found from killing some monsters, or be crafted by jewelcrafters. Players can essentially mix and match the gems to the items to customize them in thousands of ways and sometimes unlock special abilities in the items.

New Approach to PvP

PvP (player v. player) play has seen a lot of development for the release of Burning Crusade. There is a new PvP battleground, Eye of the Storm, as well as Gladiatorial Arenas, and most of the new Outland area having PvP quests associated with it.

New Battleground – Eye of the Storm

This battleground is available to level 61+ characters. Basically, one Alliance team and one Horde team, each made up of 20 people play a massive game of capture the flag/capture the tower. Through playing in the battleground you earn tokens (one if you're on the losing team, three if you're on the winning team) as well as honor for killing the members of the opposing team or resurrecting those on your own team. The tokens and honor gained are generally used for buying new items, or for paying to improve your own items.

Gladiatorial Arenas

These are completely new to WOW. The arenas can be used in two "modes."

Practice mode – Players of any level can compete for fun and to work on their own or team skills in equally matched teams of 2, 3 or 5 people. There are no rewards for doing this, except the experience of playing. Players are matched up based on their level and the quality of their equipment.

Ladder mode – Once at level 70, players can compete in a ladder ranking system by participating in gladiatorial style games. This is all team based combat (2 v. 2, 3 v. 3 or 5 v. 5). This is played in quarterly (3 month long) seasons. Points are awarded and performance ranked weekly. The points can be spent on armor, weapons, jewelry and trinkets. There are also prizes for the record holders for the quarter-long season.

My Take

Addictive. Any game that can get people standing in line for hours for a midnight release, just to get the box, just to be able to install and start playing... has clearly got something going for it. The race to 70 is off and running, and some people have gotten there within 48 hours of the release – most likely having not slept or trading off who is playing the character! For players who take things at a little more leisurely pace, the expansion offers a lot of new geography to explore and a lot of new quests to complete.

Positives: I really like that the quests released have moved toward a more genre-preserving tone instead of tongue-in-cheek references to other games and "insider" style jokes. The new Outland area is absolutely gorgeous, graphically speaking. Although the characters are rather cartoon-like, the geographical settings are amazingly artistic. I also like that the game designers have not placed limits on the geography (this is true of the game engine in the original WOW as well) – if you run to the edge of a cliff and jump off it, you can and you'll be shown all the way to the bottom. You don't run into an artificial wall or just get put back to a save spot or anything.

Negatives: There are still some glitches present in the game, even after several patches. Some that I have run into are "non-existent" cannons that shoot and kill you. They're only non-existent because the graphics representing them are not in the game, therefore making them untargetable by players. Even with mounts moving ever-faster, with the sheer amount of geography in the game, and many quests sending you back and forth between areas, you spend a lot of time sitting at your monitor, watching your character travel without any player input necessary. Once you've seen the graphics flowing by a few times, it gets pretty boring to just wait for travel time to elapse. Unfortunately, this is a problem that plagues every graphical MMORPG I've tried.

Since the release of Burning Crusade, a lot of players who had capped before have returned, which has caused a spike in the number of players on the servers. This, in turn, has caused some people to experience a wait time before they can log in to play the game. Blizzard, the producer of WOW, is doing everything they can to balance out the server usage, by letting players move their characters to different, underutilized servers for free (something that's not normally available) if the characters are currently on servers that are overloaded.

Another thing that I don't like right now, is that Hellfire Peninsula, the initial area of Outland, is completely packed with all the new players. I expect that this will balance out as time goes by, but for now it's a bit annoying.

Potential Warning

The game is potentially offensive to those who might object to demonic references for religious reasons, especially since some of the player characters are allied with the demonic forces.

Additionally, as with all online games, there is the potential for adult content/speech being used by other players that the game producer can't control.

The game itself is rated "Teen."

Technical Babble

WOW is one of the least demanding games out there, as far as required computer hardware. It will run decently on the minimum requirements, though if you've got the computing power to support more, it can be gorgeous – especially the new areas.

Instead of retyping the requirements, I suggest you consult Blizzard's FAQ's for that info at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/burningcrusade/faq.html#technology