World of Warcraft - The Burning Crusade Review

It would be hard to argue that World of Warcraft hasn't been a huge success. Not only has it been a financial success in the MMO market, but it has introduced many new people to Massive gaming that might not have otherwise given it a shot. With their first expansion, The Burning Crusade, Blizzard has made huge advances in many areas of the game. Long-standing complaints have been addressed, and the structure of the popular title has been reinforced. The casual players have gotten a large injection of content that is both accessible and enjoyable to someone who doesn't have huge amounts of time to play. At the same time, hardcore players who thirst for new challenges on a daily basis have quite a bit of work ahead of them. This is not to say that The Burning Crusade (BC) doesn't have its pitfalls, but overall I get the feeling that this is closer to what Blizzard's World of Warcraft dream was meant to be. Read on for my opinions of this new round of addiction.

• Title: World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade
• Developer/Publisher: Blizzard / Vivendi
• System: PC / Mac
• Genre: Massively Multiplayer Online Game
• Score: 4/5 - This game is a wonderful addition to the original World of Warcraft universe and helps to alleviate many of the "problems" that players have been complaining about for a long time. If you are burnt out on the original game, now is a good time to give it another look.

In the beginning Blizzard gave us World of Warcraft. And life was good. Like any shiny new toy, the faults inherent to the game weren't initially obvious. As time wore on, though, players were able to delve into the guts of the game through raiding and excessive amounts of play. After a while the main complaints seemed to fall into two different "camps": those who wanted to see more "hardcore" content and those who wanted to see more "solo" or "casual" content. There were many arguments about how these two groups of people were mutually exclusive and how one or the other was the "obvious" best choice. However, in BC, Blizzard has done an excellent job in making sure that both groups of players have content to shoot for, even if the rewards aren't necessarily all that much better for conquering the raid content.

The first major improvement in the game comes with the extension of the level grind. There is a vast difference in the enjoyment of leveling a character from levels 1-60 and from 60-70. While the amount of experience is relatively comparable, the mechanisms in place make it a completely different animal. With the original game, leveling was thought of as one of the main aspects of the game and designed to take a long time to do with very little continuity or help to speed you along. Instances were designed to be for gear rewards and something you did rarely in between your bouts of leveling. With The Burning Crusade, the quests were designed to make you feel like you were accomplishing smaller tasks within a grand scheme, and they actually helped to develop the plot and a feeling that you were a part of the game rather than just trying to "beat" the game to get a level.

Throughout the questing and overall leveling process, instances in the Burning Crusade were also designed to be a much more integral part of the game for both leveling and gear. The group experience bonus allows a player to still make good progress towards the next level while playing through group content with friends and finding new challenges and boss fights along the way. The quests for every zone eventually start to poke and prod you towards the next level appropriate instance to help players make this decision and help round out the leveling experience. To make the process of instancing even better, Blizzard has grouped the instances in each zone together as "wings" of increasing difficulty within a larger structure that has an overall theme. This allows players to tackle the content in smaller chunks without having to commit large blocks of time just to do an instance. At the end of each group of instances the content culminates in a larger group encounter for raids to tackle once their players have completed a key quest for that particular instance.

While instances may have gotten a large push in the right direction, there are still a couple of major problems that continue to crop up, preventing players from really enjoying the content that is right in front of them. The largest of these problems are instance-breaking bugs. There have been quite a few of them since launch, and while bugs are to be expected, these are taking a long time to fix. Meanwhile the customer service reps in game are doing very little to help the players deal with the bugs beyond telling them it is a known problem and sorry about your luck. Now, I realize that some people are going to try and exploit GM assistance, but there comes a time when you just need to give your customer the benefit of the doubt and help them through any problems that crop up. The other major problem attached to instances comes before you even make it to the instance. If you aren't part of a large guild with resources always at hand, it means you are going to have to try your luck with a pickup group. While the "Looking for Group" interface was a neat addition, I think Blizzard either did too much or too little depending on what they were going for. With a simple global chat channel it was very easy for players just to type what they were looking to do and for others to answer, a quick and easy solution. In fact, most servers have seen a grass roots channel emerge to move back to this functionality. With the introduction of a user interface and automation to the process, they removed the "easy" solution but didn't go far enough with the complex solution. Ultimately, the "best" answer to this problem would be to bring back the chat channel but make the user interface "grab" names and classes from that chat channel into a larger pool of people to draw from, allowing users to use both methods of communication depending on their preference.

One of the main points of skepticism before the release of The Burning Crusade was the number of reputation "grinds" that would be required in order to experience new content. While much of the new content is hidden behind reputation requirements, the new system allows players to gain reputation at an amazingly fast rate making this requirement almost a non-issue. In addition to new content for these new factions the reputation system also unlocks a vast amount of new pearls for the crafting system. This allows different reputation choices to determine which recipes you are able to craft so that each crafter has the ability to obtain unique recipes instead of being a cookie cutter crafter like it was before the expansion.

Despite the fact that the casual consumer has definitely been given quite a bit of content to work their way through, the hardcore player has certainly not been left in the lurch. Raid content is available in spades. The addition of a 'heroic mode' for dungeons allows players to go back and play through previous instances at a higher difficulty level (and for better rewards). This, again, requires that they have put in the time to attain a high enough reputation level with the controlling faction. With each set of instances, there is also a difficult 25-man raid (now that Blizzard has decided to limit their "large" raids to 25 players instead of 40) encounter designed to provide an additional challenge. Beyond these short raids there is also new 10-man content (Karazhan) that allows players to work through a larger dungeon and attain a new armor "set" in addition to the random drops that still occur. Once players have made their way through this 10-man content they can start working towards some of the even larger 25-man content with huge sprawling dungeons promised, eventually culminating in the battle through Mount Hyjal. However, in order to get to this final realization players must wade through a lot of content. In an effort to help players in this goal one player even put together a flow chart of what it is going to take to realize this goal.

The largest problem with the current raid content is that while it requires large amounts of work to get to and complete (as it should), the rewards for actually completing that raid content have all but eviscerated the desire to do the work. Having moved from a "hardcore" raiding style of play to a much more casual approach I was quite pleased at how much I was able to do on a daily basis with my limited time. However, looking back at my previous play style and the rewards that I would be shooting for I realized that there was very little reason for me to aim for those "end game" rewards anymore. The time spent versus rewards earned seems a little imbalanced. I'm sure that a large part of this decision was to try and cater to the larger "casual" player base and stop the hemorrhage of players they were losing to other games. Just the same, if you are going to create content that caters to your hardcore players you should probably create rewards that justify the work they are about to put into it.

While much of the game play and content has been improved greatly the class balance issue is still one that continues to haunt Blizzard. For example, if you are a Rogue and you really want to experience some of the heroic content and smaller raid encounters, you are in for a difficult time finding a group. The same goes for priests if you are really into the competitive player versus player aspect of the game. I am willing to give Blizzard the benefit of the doubt on this one since they are probably still evaluating how the new talents and new gear will effect the overall class balance, but changes are definitely needed.

In addition to all of the game play changes, each faction also has a new race, a new homeland, and tons of new starting quests to work through. While information on the new horde race, the Blood-Elf, has been available for quite some time, the new alliance race, the Draenei, has been somewhat of a mystery almost until the release of the beta. Unfortunately, this also shows in the quality of both the quests and the overall feel for each of these races. The homeland and starting quests for the Blood-Elves have a much larger degree of continuity and they lend a feeling of a long time in development while the Draenei feel like a last minute cobble when they couldn't think of anything else. This obviously doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things once you make it to Outland and the new content, but it can have a definite effect on someone just starting the game.

Overall, it seems that Blizzard is definitely listening to their player base, they just need to do a better job of communicating that fact. I realize that it is hard to release information about something if it later gets taken away or changed, but let your GM staff work for you, give the player the benefit of the doubt more often, and admit when something is wrong so that players can avoid the disappointment while it is being fixed.

Despite any pitfalls, The Burning Crusade is an excellent addition to the Warcraft Universe. Blizzard has done an excellent job of catering to many of the different types of players within the game, providing a wide array of enjoyable content. If you are new to the MMO scene or even if you gave up hope before The Burning Crusade hit the streets, now is a great time to get into the game and give it a shot.

Why review this?

Everyone who plays WoW will buy it. If you don't play WoW, you either aren't interested or you would have started by now, or you realized how pointless and boring the game is and have no intention of buying a pointless and boring expansion.

Re:Why review this?

Nobody has ever quit WoW.

Re:Why review this?

They really shouldn't be. It's exactly the same except now you kill foozles instead of woozles. In my opinion, Burning Crusade made WoW worse than it was before, not better. I bought a copy of BC and a couple weeks later cancelled my account permanently. All Burning Crusade really did was reset the game to a level 70 cap and make everything accomplished before level 61 irrelevent.

Some people want more of exactly the same, but combined with Vivendi's foolish idea that removing dps class roles from the game would somehow improve the game by disenfranchising rogues and mages, the game ended up being more of the same but distinctly worse. Since the release of the expansion there has been a steady trickle of people in my former guild quitting the game. It seems only the really new players actually like the expansion, mostly because they hadn't invested time into doing level 60 activities and thus didn't end up wondering why everything that had accomplished in the game to date had to be rendered utterly useless by the expansion.

Re:Why review this?

I'm not sure you fully appreciate the changes in BC for several reasons:

1) Most players know that set items pre-BC weren't very good in the first place, they are easily replaced by non-set items gained through questing. True, the epic items will mostly be replaced by blue quest items, but they will be replaced. Many of the bonuses on your level 60 gear actually scale downwards as you level. Your "crit rating" becomes less effective as you level up, going from level 60 to level 70 you will loose about 50% of the crit bonus that you had at level 60, for example.

2) You will never again see a 40 man raid, the new raid content is 25 man raid content and the old stuff offers nothing to justify the time expenditure. The only reason to do the 40 man raid content is curiousity or nostalgia, because even the legendary staff from Naxx pales in comparison to epic level 70 one-handed weapons. There are simply no rewards worth delving into the 40 man content for. Even then, the level 60 content should be so trivialized by level 70 players that you probably won't need more than 10-20 players to complete MC, BWL, AQ40 and Naxx. Heck, it's only a matter of time before someone starts soloing the level 60 raid bosses for fame and kicks.

3) There are no rewards worth earning from any factiont that you can rep grind outside the Outlands. Almost everything of value is concentrated in the outlands. This means the time invested in grinding those level 60 reputations is now worthless, just as the time invested in earning equipment from Naxx is now pointless, you gear will be superceded by new gear on the way to 70. To some people that will seem justifiable, but the case was that did not happen on your way to level 60 from level 50. If you had the good fortune to have a level 50 epic weapon, you most likely kept it until you replaced with a high-end level 60 blue item, rather than a quest reward from some random level up quest. The only exceptions are the new instances Caverns of Times and Medivh's Tower that are in the "old world".

That's why everything pre-61 has been rendered pointless. In some ways that's a good thing, someone who just made level 60 before the expansion came out will essentially be on an even footing with someone who started at release and spent almost 2 years at level 60, but in my opinion and that of many others, that's going too far. This is a MMORPG, part of the point is to build up your character, to reduce someone who put 2 years of effort into their character to the same level as someone who put 2 weeks into it, just doesn't sit right.

Actually, since I played a mage, it was much worse than that for me. Mages received a ton of nerfs for the expansion to force one of the original 2 pure dps classes into the position of doing only average damage. At that point, why play a mage, and since it was obvious that Vivendi doesn't understand how to run or balance their game, why bother playing? Mages in particular are now inferior in every way to warlock character. Less dps, more downtime, less hit points, less pvp viabilitiy, worse AoE. If I was running a hard core raiding guild, I wouldn't take more than 1 mage into a 25 man instance, and the mage would be there solely to buff warlock dps with scorch (and hand out food and water and AB). I played the class, and that would be my recommendation.

Heck you hardly need any diversity in the game for an ideal raid. You want Druids to tank, and Druids to heal, warlocks to dps, and shadow priests for support dps (2 SP and 3 Warlocks for every dps group), and a few paladins for healing and buffing. The other classes are all hinderances. They lessen the effectiveness of your raid. If you're horde you might want a shaman or a warrior to deal with a fear spamming boss.

Re:Why review this?

I'm a casual player as well and curious as to what you've been smoking.

My only character in the game was a level 60. I haven't done any of the new races (I heard they're well designed and beautiful). From level 60-70, I've probably gone on 20 small-man dungeon runs (5 players) and done about 400-500 quests. I've levelled up my leatherworking and saved money for my epic flying mount (Druids get the regular one for free). Even when I play totally solo, the new content has kept me enthralled.

Will you enjoy the game more if you level to 60 and find a few friends to play with. Yes. Is that hard? No. If you're still struggling to get to 60 (again, not hard) you're going to see generic content -- nothing from 20-60 has changed. For every other casual player who's at 60, the expansion has been a blessing with loads of new content and lots of upgrades.

Re:Why review this?

As the other replier pointed out, training is free. You get flight form and the ability to ride any regular flying mount when you train at 68. Outside this, there's another great benefit: Druid flight form is instant cast. It's also immune to polymorph and breaks certain snares. That means, at any given time (even falling hundreds of feet) a Druid can shift and fly away. It's an invaluable addition to their repertoire.

How is this new?

To make the process of instancing even better, Blizzard has grouped the instances in each zone together as "wings" of increasing difficulty within a larger structure that has an overall theme.

Uh, you mean like the Scarlet Monastary? (That's pre BC for both of you who haven't played)

A ton of content.

As far as expansions for MMOs go, the Burning Crusade does have a TON more content than normal. No new classes was a glaring flaw though, and it will be interesting to see if they can get away with that in future expansions.

global "looking for group" channel

While I can see people's point when they complain about the newish LFG tool, I really don't want to go back to the server-wide LFG channel. It was basically global Barrens chat.

Re:global "looking for group" channel

The way they could fix this is to put a global chat channel INSIDE the LFG tool, with a timer (2 broadcasts per 30 sec). That'd make it inconvenient to use as a chat channel, and would mostly be seen only by people actually actively looking for a group. The tool is nice, but needs some tweaks. But worse, the inability to chat destroys any usefulness it might have had.

Re:global "looking for group" channel

The biggest downer of the LFG tool is the artificial limits that have been put in place.

1) Altruism - There have been times in the past where I see a grammatically correct and polite request for a VC group sent out for an hour or more. I like to reward people for these things, and so I'll bring in a high level character and get them through the dungeon or a hard quest. The new LFG tool has absolutely no support for friendly, high level players.

2) Multiple Characters - I tend to have multiple characters on a single server. A habit of mine with the LFG channel was to play one character while monitoring the channel for a dungeon another character needed. The LFG tool has no functionality supporting this.

3) Craziness - Sometimes people want to group for odd things. Whether it's a roleplaying parade, a raid on an enemy city, or a counter-offensive to an enemy attack the LFG channel allowed groups for non-standard events. The LFG tool has no functionality for people joining groups unassociated with predefined directives.

4) Automation - While much of the LFG tool is automatic, using it isn't. Most players by default would join the LFG channel on login. People must personally open the LFG tool and set what they need. The result is a crippling effect on participation.

5) Simple Limits - One of the major problems with the LFG tool is the limited amount of LFGing you can do with it at any one time. Despite the fact that I might be looking for several wings of SM, RFD, some elite Arathi quests and perhaps a general Zone group for the Badlands I must pick and choose between a maximum of three things. SM alone can eat 3 of those without even covering the whole instance. As instances generally fulfil many quests, they take higher priority than individual quests. This makes it extremely difficult to use the LFG tool for anything that isn't a dungeon, as people naturally select what will give them their "money's worth".

6) LFM - The LFM portion of the tool is simply bad. Three was limiting enough, but at most you can LFM for one dungeon, quest, raid, zone at a time. If you're doing quests outside of dungeons, you might suffer from the "ships passing in the night" syndrome as you flutter through the relevant quests looking for people who might be interested.

Those are my criticisms of the tool. It has great potential, but I think Blizzard jumped the gun. It's going to be twice as hard to convince people to adopt it because of the perception that it sucks. Even if it is improved to the ease of use and functional level of the LFG channel, people won't be convinced. It would have been better if they had waited and expanded it before replacing the flawed but undeniably useful LFG channel.

Incomprehensible!

As a non-WoW player (I do play Runescape though) this made very little sense to me. Can someone explain what an 'instance' is?

I'm equally baffled by the reviewer saying "players must wade through a lot of content." isn't content rather than grind what everyone wants?

Re:Incomprehensible!

And "instance" is a dungeon, populated with monsters and quest goals, generated specifically for your party. No one else is there. If some other group tries to enter the same dungeon, they get a difference "instance". It's a good way of getting away from the farmers and channel chatter.

Instances also have bosses with mad l3wt, which is always fun.

Good review, for those thinking of returning

I concur with almost everything in this review.

I'll note one additional data point: When you do some of the initial quests, you'll be amazed at the quality of the quest rewards for relatively simple quests. I believe this was an intentional design to bring the "casual" player up to raid quality gear, effectively levelling the playing field. Casuals do not start at much of a disadvantage when they're having T2-quality gear heaped upon them (previously only available in instances such as BWL, where few casual players were able to attend).

The game does slow down after you hit 70, but more options open. Most likely, you'll be grinding to get a fast mount, but you'll almost certainly have 1000g for the slow flying mount. You'll want a guild, but one is not necessary to participate in most of the content. However, guildless, it's unlikely you'll progress into the "advanced" content for quite a while. It's difficult to complete the 10-man Karazhan key in PUGs, and even if you do, there are few 10-man PUGs. That sounds kind of funny, but Karazhan is NOT simply a level 70 UBRS. It's more like a 10-man Naxxramus.

Re:Good review, for those thinking of returning

I had little raid-content gear before I started in the expansion. I was, literally, replacing a piece of armor every 30-60 minutes of play for the first week. All of my pre-BC gear was gone in two weeks, and in most slots I'd upgraded 3-4 times.

Eventually, when finished with Hellfire Peninsula and moving into Zangarmarsh, the gear turnover slows down. Suprisingly, I found this to be quite a relief; I didn't want to have to slow down and reevaluate my gear once an hour!

Draenei Cobbled?

While I've liked both starting areas, I have quite enjoyed the Draenei starting quests. It's true that the architecture in the Blood Elf region is more complex, but that's consistent with the game in my opinion - the Blood Elfs are starting in their recently wrecked city, the Draenei start stranded on a remote island. The starting quests on the Draenei side are quite good - in fact, the "Medal Ceremony" at the end of the final elite quest is very cool. And then there's the Kessell Run. [wowwiki.com]

However, I can see how someone might prefer the flavor of the Blood Elf starting area to the Draenei area. To me, that difference in flavor shows how much thought Blizzard put into each area.

casual

what do they mean by casual players? People playing less than 2hrs a day ?

Re:casual

They mean people with jobs and\or social lives.

Additional impressions from a casual player

Just some intro caveats: I'm a casual player. I think I've been in a raid-group of more than 5 twice. I am friends with several people who are serious raiders, but I'm not one.

Initially when you first start the new content, the items you receive feel unbelievably good. They are meant to bring you up to just barely under the power level of the folks who have spent the past years raiding. And because of this, the new stuff felt really munchkin initially. Fun, but munchkin. Epic items from pre-BC were replaced with green(normal) items found in BC. The quests are good - a lot of the little annoying bits have been toned down (fewer pointless long runs, flagging quests that really require multiple people as requiring 2 or 3 people as appropriate). There is a lot of nice flavor here.

One thing the reviewer missed is that a lot of BC is really beautiful. Each zone is very distinctive. And there have been several times when I just paused to admire the beauty. With the addition of flying mounts, there are some really gorgeous views that can be found. Several of the instances are visually stunning as well. This is a pretty game.

There are some class balance issues -- but I think at least part of the issues are that the classes changed a bit and people have not adapted their thinking. For example, it used to be hard to try to be a raiding druid in the tank role -- there was effectively one set of gear that all tank-druids went for. BC has added a large variety -- which means the class is a lot more viable in a role than it used to be. Is this unbalancing? No. It is different and changes some of the feel of the game.

Too little too late

Given the amount of money coming in they should be dropping one of these out every 12 months, this was thrown together to try and keep the competition at bay.

There is no-reason why there shouldn't be 10-15 races by now, with a *proper* crafting system. Instead blizzard wasted time with Raid instances that only the minority wanted.

Doesn't mean I'm not playing it though :) must level ... must level ... must level .......

Quick Question

Where you able to type out "With the original game, leveling was thought of as one of the main aspects of the game and designed to take a long time to do with very little continuity or help to speed you along." without laughing?

BC = Easy

So far I think the BC's content is large but short on quality. Lots and tons of new gear but re-colored items with no new graphics. Some new epic gear has some of the wackiest artwork, doesn't have the consistent quality of many pre-BC designs. Most of the quests are way too easy for certain classes, while certain classes are dependent on others to help them grind quests. They have yet to fix class imbalances and looks like it got worst. Some classes have scaled so far ahead of others that they don't even need a party to help grind elite quests. Its a bit unfair there. I say BC was a bit rushed overall, lots of repetitive quest grinds and nothing new to the game, many class specific changes only benefit those classes and Blizzard has remained silent about changes, not giving anyone a shred of hope that they would fix them. Perhaps LOTR Online, here we come?

It's all about context

Did anyone else read this synopsis on the Slashdot front page and then completely misinterpret the next article down? For a minute I thought Slashdot was turning into Gamespot.

First Article - "World of Warcraft - The Burning Crusade Review"
Second Article - "Recovering a Wrecked RAID"

Instance wings

Aside from Scarlet Monastery, which was always broken up into sections, does anyone know if they broke any of the pre-BC instances into multiple parts? Specifically AQ, MC, or ZF?

BC is good, to an extent

I quit WoW and started again after BC came out. They did fix a bunch of stuff:

• Instances no longer require a 4 hour commitment
• Casual playing actually has rewards
• Zones are very well designed and laid out
• One in ten quests is actually interesting and fun

However, after I did a quest where I had to kill Hydras for 4 hours in order to get 8 scales or whatever, I realized that it was more of the same crap and the promptly quit the game again.

Thanks for the warning

I need my MMORPG fix but I do NOT need those random loot drop grinds.

WoW players might regonize were I stopped playing WoW. It is in the night elf area, third area, and you got to kill some warlocks with their pets for an item to drop as part of a longer quest.

It didn't drop. My rogue gained two levels in that area while I learned how exactly to get them in the shortest possible time. Simple, conceal, sap caster, kill pet, kill caster. Rince and repeat.

That killed the game for me, right there and then I knew that this was exactly how the game would be for the next 40 levels and then some.

Since I had already paid over the next few weeks I got my char to around 30 (were getting new skills ends and you just get slightly more powerful skills to deal with more powerful critters) and then just stopped.

I couldn't stand the random drop nature of things. EQ2 at least most times TOLD you how much you had to kill. Granted most its quests were Kill 8 X, Kill another 8 X, and again. Once more. Okay, now kill 10 of them. Okay! Now kill 8 x (adjective) X. Congrats, you done part 1, now kill more X.

But at least you could count them.

Get the goddamn fucking randomizer OUT of my MMORPG's. If I kill every single last one of those casters the damn item should just fucking drop.

It was the same with crafting. The chances of actually getting some of the rarer stuff were so random that you just couldn't make plans. By the time some items actually dropped I had gotten so many levels I was way beyond the item I had wanted to grind.

WoW takes to long. Your warning tells me BC does not improve this. I HATE RANDOM DROPS.

If Blizzard had made Star Wars poor Luke would have had to make a dozen trips to the Jawas before R2-D2 dropped.

Then again, if Sony had made Star Wars, you would have had to form a que to rescue Leia, if she was spawning that day.

Mmm, if only Lucas made a MMORPG. Surely that would be tops! Oh wait.

PC / Mac ?

System: PC / Mac ?

There is a Linux port ? woaw !! that's great. Or PC = Windows ?

Expansion Side Effect

I'm not trying to troll, but I think the expanions should have been a free upgrade. For one thing, adding free new content gives players incentive to keep playing (and they're already paying). I'm guessing there are at least few players out there who have lost interest, and a $40 expansion isn't enticing, but maybe a free one would be.

Also, this expansion has "de-valued" a lot of characters. For example, my once powerful 60, is now getting 2-hitted by characters only a few levels higher, because 61-70 characters are disproporionately more powerful. Not being able to access new content is one thing, but it actually puts others at a significant disadvantage (items, levels, battlegrounds, etc.).

I realize Blizzard is in the business to make money, but a free expansion could have made financial sense too.

time vs skill

The largest problem with the current raid content is that while it requires large amounts of work to get to and complete (as it should)

Why should it? This is why I hate (and do not play) this game. A good game should advance with the player's skill and a little bit of time. World of Warcraft advances the story only with time, time, and more time. You'll pour your life into the game, but you can still suck large amounts of ass at it. The reason that there are countless level 60/70 clueless morons is because the game requires no skill to speak of, only endless amounts of time.

Meanwhile Engineering gets a single faction recipe

Green Smoke Flares

What do they do you ask? Nothing. FUCK YOU BLIZZARD!

Levelling is now different, somehow?

I don't understand that observation. I'm still pointing and clicking and doing repetitive tasks.
I still have 25 or so backpack slots filled with stuff I need for some forgotten (and possibly lapsed) purpose.

I enjoy the game every so often, but need to find my buddies online to really get into a play session.

tone

lackluster Draeno fully intentional

The comment towards the end about how elaborate and well-done the Blood Elf starting area is, compared to the Draeno, is interesting. For those of us who have played characters on both factions pre-BC the reasons are apparent, and have been mentioned on the forums by Blizzard customer service reps.

The "lackluster" Draeno areas are familiar to Horde players. This is how ALL Horde starting areas are, up until Burning Crusdade. The Alliance starting areas are complex, beautiful, and full of life. Horde characters typically spend their first 25 levels in a place called The Barrens, which is....surprise....Barren. It's a gigantic brown swatch of land that is as bland as can be.

This is due, apparently, to the fact that the Horde really was an aferthought in game development, and had much of their content rushed through for launch. Since the initial launch of the game, some efforts have been made to improve the Horde areas, but they still fall far behind what you see on the Alliance side. If you go to cancel your WOW account, "poor Horde content" is an option in the dropdown for why you're cancelling.

So the Blood Elf starting area is the way it is for two reasons. One, because the Horde have been lacking any good starting areas since the game's inception. But in addition, but partially for that reason, there have always been fewer Horde characters on every server than Alliance. Another reason cited for this discrepancy is that the horde classes are ugly.

The addition of Blood Elves with an awesome starting area gives the Horde side some much needed attention. It gives them a sought-after "pretty" class to draw players in, and it gives them an good starting area to keep them playing.

The flip side is that the Draeno are intentionally 'alien' and weird, with a starting area equivalent to the other Horde starting areas. So while the Alliance get a new race, it's intentionally designed to push people towards the new Horde race instead. Balancing the number of players on each faction is very important for PVP, and is a good move on Blizzard's part.

And you Alliance whiners can shut up and go level a toon through the Barrens, *then* try to say the Drano starting area is bad... :)

My (short) experience with WoW

roflcopter lawl lrn2dps nub
lawl dude ur ghay
wtf i need
i clicked greed it must be a bug
ya right btch

ok we're almost to the boss
i gotta go
What? why?
mom wants cpu
Huh? Your Mom? Its 4a.m. How old are you anyway?

i nd gold plz
Huh?
ind gold to repr my armer
will u giv me sm gd?
No.
y not? wtf
I'm almost broke, I can't be giving any gold.
FU thn nub u sck

not a gamer so please forgive me

With a name like "crusade" how does it sell in Arab countries? Or do they have a different name for those countries like "Idol Crusher" or something?

Anyone else find it ironic

That this story was posted RIGHT ABOVE "Recovering a Wrecked RAID"?
Aren't they all?

Addicted

I play World of Warcraft every summer and quit when I return back to college. Honestly, I have no problem quitting for months at a time but I have to admit, there is something in the game that I'm addicted to that when I read stuff like this I get very nostalgic. Even if I were to install the game and just look at the menu screen I would have the urge to play again. The game itself gets very boring end game but there is something I miss about it. Fortunately for me I realized this and sold my characters to make sure I didn't start playing again.

instance-breaking bugs?

I do believe that instance-breaking bugs are the least of blizzard's problems. They spent a considerable amount of effort making the instances in Azeroth robust and a pleasure to play. These instances are no longer being (or very minimally) run. For example, no one would want to run Blackwing Lair anymore because the gear there is on par with level 70 Blues which are EASIER to obtain. MC is completely broken. Naxx is barely hanging on. Level 60 5-Mans are basically done for too since the gear form them is completely inadequate to the uncommon items available from outland.

Has Blizzard broke half the game by introducing a new half? You decide.

Bought It, Played It, Cancelled My Account

I bought the expansion and played it for about two weeks. One day, I just didn't feel like logging in. Days went by... weeks went by... and I decided to cancel my account.

It basically boils down to two reasons:

1) More Of The Same: Kill critters, collect items, and get gold and shiny weapons or armor. Lather, rinse, repeat. I've been playing from the open beta, and the "new content" slowly felt like the same old thing after a while. I've grown tired of pressing the lever in my Skinner box, and the pellets aren't quite as tasty after eating them for two years.

2) Social Discord: I went from being a semi-hardcore player to a casual player in a so-called casual guild. Before BC hit we would run instances for fun or to help a guildie level an alt. We'd laugh it up on our Vent server and have a grand old time. Once BC hit, a core group of people - the guild leaders and their real-life friends - took off for level 70, leaving most of the casual players like myself behind. These guys have been friends for years and they either had or were willing to commit more time to the game than I was. And it's not much fun to be in a Vent channel with four or five guys who are running quests or instances that you won't be able to run until the following week, so the social aspect of the game diminished for me as well.

More of the same + level stratification = not fun anymore

After two years of playing WoW....

...The expansion made me quit. I upgraded two of my accounts the day BC came out, leveled my 60 Warr to 64 and my 60 Mage to 64-65 both within a week or so after release and came to the realization that this is the same content with a new coat of paint. The article says there were many bug fixes etc with the new expansion...yeah like what...character balance? Right...that big issue is still not fixed. The expansion is NOT new content its the same content we did 1-60. The dungeons, the raids, the quests they are all the same things with new models and maps. Nothing more than an expensive patch to the game which I was suckered into.

WTB 2 years of my life back PST!

2 points of contention

Good review generally, I just have one point of contention I came across while reading it:

I'm sure that a large part of this decision was to try and cater to the larger "casual" player base and stop the hemorrhage of players they were losing to other games.

At what point did WoW start hemorrhaging players? Subscriptions have been on a steady increase since the game launched and I haven't seen any evidence to say otherwise. They hit 7 million subscribers a month or so before Christmas and 8 million afterwards. I'd argue that making the raid content in BC more casual friendly was just a reflection of them understanding their customer base. You can't have 8 million subscribers that are all hard core raider types. If it didn't start out as one, certainly WoW is a mainstream casual friendly game now and they've simply acknowledged that.

A few notes...

I'm somewhere between a casual & heavy player. I raided a little bit on multiple servers, and burned out with the need to schedule my life around 40-man guild raids. I just can't justify playing for more than 6-7 hours in a week, and I had three lvl 60 characters at the time.

So, I put the game down as I'd seen everything I wanted to see, and accomplished everything I wanted to accomplish except for the last new pieces of epic purple lewt(TM) in my set.

Fast forward a year or so, and I bought the expansion, and I found that my needs (being halfway between "raider" and "casual") had been met absolutely perfectly.

The game is gorgeous, the new questlines and level progression from 60-70 doesn't feel anything like a grind, and the improvements to the game made over the last year as a whole, are astonishing.

Yeah, you can look at that flowchart about what it takes to get into the final, epic battle at Mt. Hyjal and it looks terrifying. But, with the exception of taking out Lady Vashj and Kael'thelas, you'll be doing all of that anyway while you're progressing through the content.

That's what people don't realize... you only have to visit each of those instances once (well, twice if you run Heroic versions for the Naaru trials), and you'll be hitting that content anyway as you continue down questlines in your 60s and past 70. The reputations with each faction aren't grinds anymore. You'll get the required rep just following quests and running instances a couple times (as opposed to running, say, ZG 300 times to get exalted so you can actually use the chestpiece you won).

The point is, there's a TON of stuff to do at level 70 now that doesn't require a raid, and raids are far less painful a proposition than they were in the Molten Core days.

Contrast that to pre-burning crusade. If you didn't run raids, you were either stuck in UBRS to rinse & repeat for loot, or stuck in 18 hour Alterac Valley BGs for loot.

Now, I can log in, run any one of 18 new high level, incredibly well-designed instances (requiring boss strategy normally reserved for old 40-man runs) in an hour, run TWO games of Alterac Valley in an hour, and actually make progress in both quests and reputations for the foreseeable future in a couple hours a week.

That flowchart shows you what it takes to "win"... ie get attuned to everything and raid the 'leet raid. For all but a few of the hardcore, getting there is the fun part. You're not supposed to "win"... because you run out of stuff to do!

There's a lot to do now post-70 that's a hell of a lot of fun if you don't raid, and there's a TON to do if you raid.

The best part is: the gear gap is really narrow now. Those who pvp or run dungeons occasionally for their gear won't be horribly outclassed in PvP anymore by people with full Tier 4/5 raided gear. It's a really, really small upgrade, but the raiders are more interested that the name's in purple and they look cool, so everyone wins.

For those who never got to high levels, the new Dranei and Blood Elf areas are great little alt sandboxes as well. The leveling seems a little faster than it used to be as well.

Take all that and add in some of the best art direction, game design and polish that you're likely to see in any game, and I think it's a fabulous expansion.

Overwhelming

That's the first word that came out of my mouth when I saw some of the new content artwork. Some of the locations and architecture are absolutely gorgeous.

After getting into BC a bit, overwhelming applied to how much new quest, gear and instance content there is.

I'd say I'm a casual gamer even though I play WoW ~25 hours a week. I've played since beta, played every class to some extent, achieved a few level 60's, run all the non-raid instances and half of the raiding ones. I still felt like I had quite a bit more to do and see in the old content. Then BC came out and I feel like I'm starting over again.

I've started new characters to experience the new starting zones, and I have a few of my characters in Outland. My guild is quite divided about the content: hardcore group has muscled ahead and reached 70 planning to lead the guild through raiding, casual group is still reaching 60 and wants to raid the old content.

I haven't purchased any other game since November 2004. I played Ultima Online for 7.5 years. WoW is considerably better than that, so I expect to be playing for a very long time. The review is fairly accurate though I disagree with the author's negative opinions about the old content.

Karazhan Key

The bcraids.jpg seems wrong to me. I think you need to do Shadow Lab, Arcatraz and Steamvault to obtain Karazhan key.

I'd say more, but I have to level my alts.

Embarrassing...

It's embarrassing to admit, but I've never even gotten a character to level 60. My highest one is level 33, the rest are 4-5 levels below that.

Has the new expansion made things any easier for the "below 60" crowd *who aren't one of the new races*, or was it mainly geared toward the 60s and the new races?

Define casual

The casual players have gotten a large injection of content that is both accessible and enjoyable to someone who doesn't have huge amounts of time to play.

I just have never understood this. I've never seen anyone besides myself complain about it. I'd like an answer here because I'm just so frustrated about it.

Firstly, define casual. The reviews (such as this one) tend to define casual as a play style - as someone who enjoys playing for quests and exploration rather than powerlevelling. But can someone please please redefine casual - maybe - as someone who actually isn't playing for 12 hours a day?

I cannot fathom the amount of hours of work it would take me to get to level 60. I'm a causal player - casual in the sense that - I basically want to spent about 150 hours total playing this game. Like a normal game. I'm not a big MMO fan but I am a huge huge Warcraft fan which is why I have continually given this game a shot. It's why I bought the Burning Crusade.

But I had no idea BC would add almost zero content until level 58. I thought it was insane, and I still just cannot begin to comprehend why they did this.

The casual players have gotten a large injection of content that is both accessible and enjoyable to someone who doesn't have huge amounts of time to play.

WHAT ABOUT SOMEONE WHO NEVER HAD HUGE AMOUNTS OF TIME TO PLAY, AND NEVER GOT ANYWHERE NEAR LEVEL 58??? What do we get from the expansion, or any of the new content coming into the game? Why did I give Blizzard $60 just so that hardcore people can enjoy this stuff?

I just never understood why no other review I've seen has ever said anything like "but you may want to hold off on this expansion unless you're level 58". Every review and everybody I've spoken to seems to assume that every WoW player is level 58. What about the true casuals, who spend their time in the 20s or 30s and are never going to see high levels?

I'll tell you what - like me, they all finally realised they had no hope of seeing any of this content, and quit. And they're not coming back.

Did they fix questing?

And by fix, I mean introduce anything new to the formula. Right before I quit, I had a huge urge to get the hell out of the areas I was stuck in the past 10 levels and move on to - what i thought - more exciting content in the upper level areas. However, as soon as I got there, I realized that it was more of the same, except this time the enemy hit for twice as much, I hit for twice as much and I had a few new toys to play with, but still the same boring content.

What was it? The terrible terrible terrible amount of collection quests. You know the ones. Collect X amount of item that is dropped from Y mob, and turn it in. Then, as a follow up, collect X amount of other item that is dropped from Y other mob, sometimes even the same mobs you had just killed to get to the first set. Then usually there is some more collection quests of even bigger mobs and finally you take down some random named mob (who rarely is anything more interesting than a little-bit-tougher enemy) and the quest line ends.

It sounds silly, but think about it. How else are you supposed to level up? You could solo, but you miss out on the quest rewards, and the XP reward arguably isn't as good. You could do 5-man's, and those are actually fun and offer OK rewards, but there are only a couple avalable to you at any given level, only one of which anyone ever decides to do (sup SM), and you have to go through a whole ringamarole in order to get there, having to meet up, dying on the way ass-deep in horde territory and having to trek a good bit of the ditance away, it's just way more of a pain in the ass than it should be. So what do you do? You solo quests. Those god-awful, boring as hell collection quests. Over and over and over again for rat asses and rusted axes and red bandanas and....honestly why the fuck do people contine to play this shit?

Now, I haven't played Burning Crusade to see if it had improved. But if I were in Blizzards shoes, here is what I would have done:

- More unique named mobs that I have to kill, or one singular treasure I have to recover, hell, even fedex quests into dangerous territory were tons more fun than what most of the quests turned out to be. I should never have to grind double-digit numbers of five different types of animals to 'thin the herds' or bring back a double digit number of momentos as 'proof of your deed'. Seriously, that shit needs to stop.

- Have a definitive 'top end' in gear, that doesn't require 5 hour raids. Balance that out by making the stuff in raids look heaps more awesome than 'common' armor. You might think this is nuts, but Guild Wars pulled this off excillently, people LOVE to farm high end content to have armor that had no practical value but looked cool as hell. Think of it as a status symbol.

- Improve PvP. Arenas are a good start, but why is it impossible to be able to schedule Guild vs. Guild on the battlegrounds? Do you have any comprehension how much more fun that would be than random assholes running around meat-grinding aroud one or two points of interest while one or two good players carry the entire team? Think of it...cordination on both sides....calculated strikes instead of mass stupidity...it would probably be the greatest thing ever.

Outland doesn't exist

Because I don't have the patience to play WoW for long periods of time, I'll never get to 60. I have an 18 rogue, 21 shaman, 33 priest, and 36 paladin, all Alliance. Between each character is a time when I quit the game when I got tired of it.

I'll never get to 60, so from my perspective, Outland simply doesn't exist. I think that that is the big flaw with the expansion.

The Draenei and Blood Elf zones are pretty, but they seem quite short, and they are the entire expansion to me.

Re:hard modes? why bother until later?

Mostly the reason we run on heroic is for the increased rep reward.

Re:Waste of your Life

What?

I think you have a hard time separating the real world from video games. . . . .

Just as 'bad' as watching TV or listening to music, except you actually interact with people in this game (yeah, I know, it's not face-to-face). Not a replacement for going and hanging out with your friends and such, but jesus, give it a rest. Not all people that play this game are 100% reclusive.

Besides, 90% of the people in the world are retarded and not worth conversing with (unfortunately, 75% of those play WoW. . .)

Re:Waste of your Life

Playing online games that keep you cocooned in your home, alone, is not really a past-time- its social aversion.

You are saying that a game in which you interact-with/play-with/talk-to hundreds of people is social aversion?

Re:Waste of your Life

Playing online games that keep you cocooned in your home, alone, is not really a past-time- its social aversion

And going to a bar plunges you into a sea of masks and unrealities. Dont lie to yourself, clubbing with other meat puppets is easily more fake.

Re:Waste of your Life

Apparently you've missed that whole social part of MMORPGs.

Since I've been on MMORPG I spend more time than ever with friends and family. My guild is made up of RL friends and family. We've moved all over the country, got jobs and kids. There's no way I can meet them for dinner or invite them over for a party, but Tuesday and Thursday nights we all sign on, daisy chain 3 way calling and we're all back together again.

Re:hard modes? why bother until later?

Actually, heroic mode offers a bit more than that. Yes, some of the loot drops are underwhelming, but the final boss drops two things you don't get on normal mode: you are guaranteed a Primal Nether which are used for epic crafting, and they will usually drop another epic item of some kind.

Also, some heroic runs are required to qualify for the new "end game" content past Karazhan.

Re:Waste of your Life

The game is not the problem its people. You have to be responsible and realize that the game is not the real world. My wife and myself both play WOW we group up and play together, my kids play too we WOW as a family. I have spent more with quality time lately with my wife than I used to, sometimes I spend to much time with my C compiler! You still have get up and be an adult and realize that the real world still exists you have to go to work, clean your house and do all the other day to day things. Don't blame the game or the developer. Didn't your momma teach you some self control?