The Burning Crusade, Part 1

After the dramatic countdown to the release of The Burning Crusade, I'm sure many of you are curious why I haven't posted about it sooner. Well, I didn't want to be hasty in my judgment, and I wanted to have experienced a lot of the pre-raiding content before deciding what I thought about the World of Warcraft expansion.

So, after 3 weeks of playing the game almost every night and most weekends, here's what I think: I love it.

In almost every aspect of the game, I think Blizzard Entertainment has done really great things, making the game more of a challenge and providing plenty of content for us to work our way through. Getting to level 70 is really just a first step; after that, there's a complicated system of instances and key quests to keep us busy. Because most of these instances are smaller than the 40-man size we saw in the original game, it's much more appealing time-wise, and calls for greater skill from the individual player.

Rather than try to cover all aspects of the expansion in one post, I'm going to devote a separate post to some of most important areas of the game, starting with the new continent added: Outland.

Outland is the original homeworld of the orcs, ripped apart by a surge of energy from portals to other worlds. It's currently home to Illidan, one of the most powerful evil forces in the World of Warcraft.

Perhaps what has impressed me the most overall about the expansion is the way that Blizzard designers captured this dangerous, frontier feeling in the landscape of Outland. Unlike the two continents of Azeroth, which are surrounded by oceans, the zones in Outland are bordered by nothing--you can fall off the edge. (I'm actually kind of excited to try falling off the edge, but I don't have enough room in the bank to put all my gear there in case I have to spirit rez :) )

Here's a picture of Teranu standing near the edge of the world in the zone of Netherstorm. Behind her, you can see asteroids that move around, with lightning zapping between them. Very cool.You can also see planets and other outer-space-like things in the sky, which further adds to the feeling that you are exploring a dangerous frontier. Illidan's words from the trailer to the Burning Crusade really hit home: "You are not prepared!" You start to think, well, maybe I'm not...maybe I should just head back to Azeroth, pretend this silly Dark Portal doesn't exist, and see how many other characters I can get up to level 60.


But then you realize that, in spite of how intimidating it looks, these new zones are very beautiful and extremely cool, and there is nothing that you want to do more than explore them. And so you do, and you're impressed at the diversity in design, with the common theme of danger carried throughout. You have the swamps of Zangarmarsh, the barren wasteland of Hellfire Peninsula, and savannas of Nagrand, and the rocky uncertainty of Netherstorm. Of the zones I've seen so far (I haven't been to Shadowmoon Valley yet), the only one I didn't like was Blade's Edge Mountains, primarily because it was such a pain to get around in. After the 15 minute graveyard run in that zone, my husband and I decided to skip to something a little easier to get around in. Also, while most of the zones have a feeling of continuity--marsh-like creatures in Zangarmarsh, safari wildlife in Nagrand--Blade's Edge Mountains seemed cobbled together, without an underlying theme. Perhaps that was the point, but regardless, it didn't work for me.

So far, my favorite is Netherstorm--I really like the cluster of islands all grouped together. And the lightning in the background is pretty cool as well.

Next up: Mobs....