By: Edward the Less

So you want to know all about The Burning Crusade, well I don't know everything but I can tell you something. First I must say it looks like Blizzard has done a good enough job and I am HAPPY they have decided to delay The Burning Crusade in order to polish the game more.

Blood Elves

I will first start with the Blood Elves. I started a Blood Elf female Warlock and will make one when the expansion is released unlike 75% of people who will make a Blood Elf Paladin. Yes I have seen many many many Blood Elf Paladins in the Beta so far.

The starting area is nicely spread out with several areas to kill quest mobs instead of one area or two small areas like in the old starter areas. There are a few new mobs but many are just old ones with new skins.

As you go from the starting level 1-5 area you will have an almost overload of quests. There is no shortage of quests and this goes double as you go into the level 10-20 zone Ghostwood.

Ghostwood is, I think, the best zone in the game. It looks like Duskwood or Felwood on crack. The mobs in this zone are a tad hard for their level but they might be tweaked down a bit before the game is released.

In both zones there are “Quest Stations”, either a town, building, or small camp that has 1-8 quest givers. This allows you to do quests and never be too far from the quest giver. With the large number of quests to do this is a great boon. You will not have to spend eight minutes walking from the quest giver to the area to do the quest then back again. And sometimes when they do send you a vary long way you will get an item to instantly bring you back to the quest giver.

Do not think this will make things go fast because as I said before there are a lot of quests and I always seem to have 5-14 quest in my log and can never get rid of them all because as soon as I finish one another one or two open up for me to do.

Most of the quests are the standard go kill X amount of this or go gather Y amount of that but there are a few nonstandard quests. One thing you should do is READ the quest text as some of it is very funny and as some of you who have played Blizzard games before you know they have a twisted sense of humor.

I have not yet finished the quest line in Ghostwood but from what I hear the ending quests are dramatic and a blast to do.

Silvermoon is the best capital city in the game in my opinion. Unlike the other Horde cities it is not a few ratty tents or hobbled together buildings. Silvermoon is like Stormwind but better.

And for those who want to know the Blood Elf mount looks like a rainbow colored chocoboo from Final Fantasy VII.

The Draenei

The Draenei area is much like the Blood Elf area in that it has quest stations and mobs normally have several areas for people to go to kill them for their quests. There is also several new mobs but most are just reskins of old ones.

The Exodar, the crashed spaceship that is now the Draenei capital city, is cool looking but im not as amazed at it as I am at Silvermoon. I have only just now reached the level 10-20 Draenei zone, Bloodmyst Isle, but so far it does not look as big as Ghostwood and does not look as if it will have as many quests but I will have to keep going to see if that is true.

The whole spaceship thing has many people in the beta talking about how this changes the Warcraft storyline, one person said this makes World of Warcraft into Warhammer 20K. Others were talking about the many errors in the Draenei background story. I must also say that the spaceship and Draenei backstory at least stretches the limit of what Blizzard should have done.

The Draenei mount looks like an elephant with six tusks, two long ones down, two short ones to the side, and two long ones up. You will get the chance to ride one sooner than you think.

Outland

I have only gone around the first zone of Outland, Hellfire Peninsula, But so far everything looks good. The Dark Portal is MASSIVE standing something like 100 feet tall.

The mobs in this area are a bit hard to do solo if your not well equipped. If you do not have the tier 1 set armor or good skills I would suggest brining a friend along to do the quests together. For a modestly equipped level 60 it's like being in a starting area again where you can easily be killed by getting two mobs on you at a time.

The mobs are bigger and some are just crazy like the Fel Reaver who stands 40-50 feet tall. The Fel Reaver is an elite mob of unknow level that wanders around. Luckily long before it gets close to you the ground shakes and your hear it coming.

The Interface

Several changes have been made to the interface. The looking for group change can be read about on the official website.

On your character sheet aka. “Paper Doll” you can now select if you want base stats, melee stats, ranged stats, or magic stats to show in two boxes just under your character.

You can now choose to see what spells a caster is casting and a bar fills up showing how long until the spell goes off. This does not show for instant cast spells.

Itemization

Many people are screaming that you can get blue level gear equal to tier 2 items in the first level 60-62 instance and you will only need 5 people and about 45 minutes to do it. All I have to say is that people should not expect their gear to last forever and that getting the new gear is not very hard.

Also you can customize the gear with gems to make them more like what you want instead of being stuck with set stat tier 2 items from the original game. These same people that spend 14-18 hours a day 6 days a week doing MC, ZG, and AQ raids will be the ones getting the high level stuff from the level 70 25 man raid instances set to hard so I don't see a problem.

You will be “Uber” again and this time it should not take you as long so you can do things like shower and go out of the house and see the sun, or as you hardcore raiders call it “The Big Scareball”. At least you wont be running the Molten Bore again for the 10,000th time.

Conclusion

Well you can say that The Burning Crusade is bigger and better than the original World of Warcraft, and that isn't that what an expansion is supposed to be.