Blizzard Entertainment took online role playing by storm with their hit title, World of Warcraft. With mind-boggling improvements in graphics, gameplay networking, and interface -- really every category -- this game became the crown prince of the genre. World of Warcraft players will be excited by the approaching release of the new expansion pack: World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade. This pack expands the already massive, award-winning multiplayer online role-playing game by tremendous bounds, adding new races, lands, battlegrounds, professions and items, and much, much more. Although no release date has been set, here is sample of what you can expect from The Burning Crusade. 
The Burning Crusade is the highly anticipated, unreleased expansion pack for Blizzard's "World of Warcraft." | 
What lies in Medivh's tower? View larger. | 
Blood Elves emerge as a new race in The Burning Crusade. View larger. | 
The Blood Elves seek the golden destiny that has been promised to them. View larger. | 
Warcraft's newest continent: Outland. View larger. | 
Once a beautiful land, Outland has been ravaged by war. View larger. | 
Outland is a vital strategic location. View larger. | The expansion pack features an increase in the level cap to 70. There are two new playable races, including the magical Blood Elves that you can read more about below. The other race has not yet been released by Blizzard. There will be new starting zones in Quel'Thalas and beyond. Another eye-opening addition is the entirely new, unexplored continent of Outland that is reachable through the Dark Portal. Plus, you'll find many new high-level dungeons to explore in Azeroth, Outland, and elsewhere that will substantially boost gameplay. There are new flying mounts in Outland; tons of new and dangerous monsters (including epic world bosses); hundreds of new quests and items; and even a new profession: Jewelcrafting. Of course this isn't the end of the list -- this is just a glimpse of what Blizzard has planned for their unreleased expansion pack. The New Story, the Rumors, and More
Several years have passed since the Burning Legion's defeat at Mount Hyjal and the races of Azeroth have continued to rebuild their once shattered lives. With renewed strength, the heroes of the Horde and Alliance have begun to explore new lands, and have broken through the Dark Portal to investigate the realms beyond the known world. In this expansion pack, The Burning Crusade refers to the Burning Legion's ongoing efforts to destroy life on Azeroth. To date, the Burning Legion's exploits have been documented in Warcraft III and in the War of the Ancients novel trilogy. As part of the expansion pack, players will now be able to travel through the Dark Portal to confront the Legion on otherworldly battlefields. Although only one race has been revealed, Blizzard has announced plans to unveil details about possible additional races at a later date. On the other hand, many details have been released about the new continent, Outland. Players last visited Outland in Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, alongside Illidan as he conquered the Pit Lord Magtheridon's domain. Players will also gain access to Quel'Thalas, the region to the northeast of the Forsaken lands, where the Blood Elves reside. Blizzard says that this expansion pack holds even more new areas that are ripe for player exploration -- additional details will be revealed in the months ahead. Blizzard also has plans to add new dungeons and battlegrounds with the expansion, though the exact number has not yet been determined. One upcoming dungeon that has players excited is Karazhan, which is located within Medivh's tower. Because Medivh has played such a central role in Warcraft lore, Blizzard is convinced that longtime players will be especially interested in seeing what Karazhan contains. As for battlegrounds, Blizzard has released very little information. However, they have announced plans to make some of the battles from the past accessible through the Caverns of Time. Blood Elves: The New Race
Thousands of years ago, the exiled Highborne landed on the shores of Lordaeron and founded the enchanted kingdom of Quel'Thas. These high elves, as they called themselves, created a fountain of vast, magical energies within the heart of their land -- the Sunwell. Over time, they grew dependant on the Sunwell's unstable energies, regardless of the bitter lessons they'd learned in ages past. During the Third War, the villainous Prince Arthas invaded Quel'Thalas and reduced the once-mighty realm to rubble and ashes. His undead army decimated nearly all of the high elven population. In addition, he used the Sunwell's energies to resurrect a powerful undead Lich, Kel'thuzad, thereby fouling the Sunwell's mystical waters. The few elven survivors, realizing that they had been cut off from the source of their arcane power, grew increasingly volatile and desperate. In the midst of the elves' darkest hour came Kael'thas Sunstrider, the last of Quel'Thalas' royal bloodline. Kael, as he was commonly known, knew that the remnant of his people would not long survive without the nourishing magic that once empowered them. Renaming his people "blood elves" in honor of their fallen countrymen, Kael taught the survivors how to tap into ambient mystical energies -- even demonic energies -- in order to sate their terrible thirst for magic. In search of a new destiny for his people, Kael'thas ventured to the remote world of Outland where he encountered the fallen night elf, Illidan. Under Illidan's watchful eye, Kael and his blood elves regained much of their former power. Unfortunately, the blood elves practice of embracing demonic energies caused their former comrades in the Alliance to shun them. Thus, the remaining blood elves on Azeroth look desperately to the Horde to help them reach Outland where they can reunite with Kael'thas and achieve the golden destiny he has promised them. Outland: The New Continent
Once the beautiful homeworld of the orcs, all that remains of Draenor is the scattered wastes of Outland. Following the Second War, the Alliance invaded Draenor by crossing through the Dark Portal. To their horror, they discovered that Ner'zhul -- the dark warlord of Horde -- had constructed a series of new gateways that could lead the beaten Horde to newer, unspoiled worlds. As the Alliance forces closed in around him, Ner'zhul opened his gateways as a means of escape. However, his plan backfired and the gateway's clashing energies resulted in a massive catastrophic explosion that ultimately ripped the world of Draenor to pieces. Nearly thirteen years later -- towards the end of the Third War -- the fallen night elf, Illidan, discovered that huge chunks of Draenor still existed, floating upon the astral winds of the Twisting Nether. After his defeat at the hands of the evil Prince Arthas, Illidan fled to the remnants of Draenor and dubbed them "Outland." He quickly seized control of the chaotic region and sealed the last of Ner'zhul's gateways. Though he is the undisputed ruler of the ravaged land, Illidan lives in fear that he will be discovered by his powerful enemies -- most notably Arthas, the new Lich King, and the remaining Lords of the Burning Legion. For now, Outland is home to a number of scattered draenei tribes, primitive orcs, and powerful, arcane creatures of the Nether itself. Agents of the Burning Legion have also targeted the region as a vital strategic location in their unending Burning Crusade to scour all life from the universe. What else can expected? Blizzard has tantalized Warcraft players with the brief glimpse into The Burning Crusade's storyline. Will these heroes find friends or foes? What dangers and rewards lie in wait beyond the Dark Portal? And what will they do when they discover that the demons they thought were vanquished have returned to renew their terrible Burning Crusade? These and other questions will remain unanswered until the gameplay can be explored by role-playing Warcrafters.
| System Requirements | | Minimum | Recommended | | Operating System | PC: Microsoft Windows XP or Windows Vista (with latest Service Packs)
Mac: Mac OS X 10.4.11 or newer | | CPU | PC: Intel Pentium 4 1.3 GHz or AMD Athlong XP 1500+
Mac: PowerPC G5 1.6 GHz or Intel Core Duo processor | PC: Dual-core processor, such as Intel Pentium D or AmD Athlong 64 X2
Mac: Intel 1.8 GHz processor or better | | Graphics Hardware | PC: 3D graphics processor with Hardware Transfor and Lighting with 32 MB VRAM, such as an ATI Radeon 7200 or NVIDIA GeForce2 class card or better
Mac: 3D graphics processor with Hardware Transform and Lighting with 64 MB VRAM, such as ATI Radeon 9600 or NVIDIA GeForce Ti 4600 class card or better | PC: 3D Graphics processor with Vertex and Pixel Shader capabilities with 128 MB VRAM, such as an ATI Radeon X1600 or NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT class card or better
Mac: 3D graphics processor with Vertex and Pixel Shader capability with 128 MB VRAM, such as ATI Radeon X1600 or NVIDIA 7600 class card or better. | | Memory | PC: 512 MB (1 GB for Vista)
Mac: 1 GB | PC: 1 GB (2 GB for Vista)
Mac: 2 GB | | Hard Drive Space | 15 GB of free space | | All Platform Requirements | Keyboard and mouse, required for controls. Other input devices not supported. Active broadband Internet connection required to play. |
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 Lots of New Content |
| Review Date: January 18, 2007 |
| Reviewer: Bobbie Lynn, USA |
This expansion pack introduces the new continent of Outland. This continent can only be accessed with a character that is at least level 58. If you're either just starting to play World of Warcraft, or you have no characters even close to level 58, you may just want to wait to buy the expansion at a later time.
However, the expansion also grants you access to two new races, the Draenei (Alliance) and the Blood Elves (Horde). You won't be able to create characters of either of these races if you don't have the expansion. So, if you want to play one of them you'll need to get it. If you're a new player who's just trying out the game, I'd suggest just getting the basic version and playing one of the original races, rather than spending the extra $40 before you even know whether you like the game.
You should also be warned that if you're upgrading from the original version of the game, even if your copy is already fully patched, you'll have to install the patches again after installing Burning Crusade. This is because they printed the CDs with version 2.0 of the client you use to play the game, but they've issued patches after that which you need to log into the server (up to version 2.05 as of this writing). If you look in the Patches sub-folder of your World of Warcraft folder on your computer, you should already have some of the patches present and be able to simply double click them to install. If you were to try to log in before doing that, you'll have to redownload the patch before it installs instead, which will naturally take more time.
Some people have complained about lag, crashes, and lines to log into the more popular servers. These are all short term problems. A lot of people are very excited about the expansion, and so there are far more players than usual logged in at once, which is straining the servers. Give it a week or two after release and it should begin to settle down.
For the basic version of WoW, the level cap is 60. If you install the expansion, the cap is increased to 70. If you have a level 60 character and want to continue to advance, you MUST upgrade your account with the expansion pack.
Additional level brackets for the Battlegrounds (Player vs Player areas) have been added to accomodate the new higher levels in the game. Also, a new battleground called Eye of the Storm has been made available for characters of level 61 and above. Additionally, around the zones of the new Outland continent, there are PvP tasks you can perform such as taking over control of towers, with the faction that controls all of the towers in a zone gaining a small bonus such as a 5% increase to damage anywhere in that zone.
They've also added a number of new instances/dungeons. The new ones have two settings, allowing you to go through them at either 'normal' difficulty, or 'heroic' difficulty. The heroic setting makes the enemies tougher, and provides increased treasure rewards. This keeps the instances useful for advancement over a larger span of levels than would normally be the case.
Most players will find that, as they do quests in Outland, they quickly begin to get armor that's superior to what they've previously been using. The monetary rewards in the new areas are also increased. Additionally, professions have been expanded to cover the additional levels in the game and tailoring has been expanded to include specialties similar to the way blacksmithing and leatherworking work.
Flying mounts are available on the continent of Outland for those who purchase them. However, these are not available to be used in the two original continents. This is because those areas were designed with the intention that they would only be accessed from the ground and a lot of work would have been required to make all of the quests and visuals work as intended if characters were permitted to fly around freely.
Be cautious about buying this item used. Each copy of the expansion includes a key code that is required to upgrade your account to allow access to the new content. If you buy a used copy of the software where the seller has already used that key to upgrade his account, you'll still be able to install the software upgrade, but the lack of an unused key will mean that you won't be able to apply the upgrade to your account that's required to actually access the new content.
If you install the expansion on a computer where more than one account is used (for example, if you and your spouse each has your own account) then you can only use the key to upgrade one of those accounts. The other account will continue to work, but it will not be given access to the expansion pack content. Therefore, you need to obtain one expansion pack for each account you or your household has if you want to access the new content on all of them.
Edit: As of January 22, 2007 Blizzard has announced on their forums that they're working on allowing players who already upgraded using the basic expansion to then also upgrade using the collector's edition in order to get the limited edition pet. You'll have to call Blizzard's billing service line with the unused collector's edition expansion key, so it's slightly more work than upgrading directly with the CE, but it can now be done. |
Don't believe the ravings of the perpetually grumpy
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| Review Date: January 17, 2007 |
| Reviewer: Robert Rowland, Claremont, CA United States |
For those of you who are wondering if you should buy the BC expansion and how it is faring on the live servers, let me put your mind at ease. The servers are up, the game is wonderful, and the new content puts the original content of WoW to shame. This is an expansion that Blizzard should stand up and be proud of!
Contrary to other players experiences, I played the expansion for about 10 hours of the first day of its official live release (not the beta), and it is not buggy. The lag in the Outland can be a bit much at times, but then again when every level 60 on your server is in one zone trying to do quests, what do you expect? The mobs are constantly respawning at a rate so fast that once you kill the mob a respwan happens almost instantly (due to the frequency of kills in the zone). I have seen only one "evade" mob bugging out, and been disconnected twice in 10 hours, each time for less than a minute. With the score and breadth of the expansion, these are small problems that will not hamper your gameplay in the least (unless you are a Mr. Grumpy-Pants).
The bottom line: buy the expansion if you play Warcraft. You won't regret it. |
Expansion pack is wow
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| Review Date: January 22, 2007 |
| Reviewer: Karl Stahmer, Wausau, WI |
World of Warcraft (WoW) expansion pack technical aspects have been covered in previous reviews. This is a synopsis:
You must have WoW (the pre expansion game) installed before installing the WoW expansion pack. The expansion pack consists of four CD disks with your CD key on the first disk. Install the disks and enter your CD key (installation will prompt you for your key).
Gave the expansion pack five stars, so we'll cover its negatives first...
1) There were a large number of level 60s when the expansion pack was released on January 16th 2007. Immediately after release, Outland starting areas like Hellfire Peninsula and Zangarmarsh were packed with level 60s all competing aggressively for the same quests. Players were compelled to group, not because quest mobs were difficult, but because so many players were trying to kill them.
2) Maps need more visual detail. For example, after you discover the zeppelin crash in the Hellfire Peninsula, its name doesn't appear on the map. You must mouse over it too see it.
3) Expansion pack quests are annoyingly vague. Strongly recommend Thottbot and Allakhazam for clarifications. Either that or your toon will be killing a lot of unnecessary mobs and doing a lot of unnecessary dying.
Now some of its many positives...
Visually and musically the expansion pack is outstanding! Zones have a strong Myst influence, i.e. Teledahn inspired Zangarmarsh. That's an excellent influence. After entering each new zone, your initial reaction will be an invariable, "Oh, wow!"
Expansion game play is precisely the same as pre expansion game play. WoW has the best game play in the MMORPG genre. Game play is intuitive; you don't need to read the game manual to begin playing.
There's an abundance of challenging quests. Blizzard has increased quest log size from 20 to 25 quests (It should be increased more, say 75 quests). The vast majority of quests do not require grouping. If you wish, you can easily solo your way to level 70.
Don't want to give away any spoilers, but here's a hint:
Get to Shattrath City (Terokkar Forest) ASAP. You'll find its banks and portals useful. Moreover, Shattrath City is yet another example of, "Oh, wow!"
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Worth the wait
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| Review Date: February 2, 2007 |
| Reviewer: bixodoido, Utah, USA |
Well, it took 2 years for the first expansion of World of Warcraft to be released. The game promises only 10 new levels to existing players, which means anywhere from about a week to a month of play (depending on play time). After that you're capped at 70 again and busy yourself with new content while you wait for another expansion. So why the hype, why is this game so great? It's quite simple--the new content is amazing. The Outland is a great new place to quest, the zones are huge, and, unlike parts of the original game, it is easy to level all the way from 60 to 70 just by doing quests alone.
Leveling is much more fun this time around (that's not to say it wasn't fun before, but it's moreso now) and the new world is so much different from the old that it's difficult to imagine feeling that its "more of the same." One of the best parts of the expansion, though, and one not to be missed, is the addition of two new races, Dranei and Blood Elves, and the storyline that accompanies the respective races. The new starting areas are remarkably well done and the plotline fantastic. Even if you're a veteran player of WoW, don't pass up the opportunity to explore the new zones.
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It DOES live up to the hype.
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| Review Date: January 21, 2007 |
| Reviewer: mike, DC, Maryland |
First of all I had no problems with bugged quests at all. Rotten cheese, you do realize that this is not Azeroth? There aren't any level 1 starting zones in Outland so why would there be Alliance/Horde territories? You think alliance would totally be in control of Hellfire penninsula? Umm...it's littered with orcs and the like. Anyways, it IS just like Azeroth in the sense that every level 60+ area is contested so DEAL WITH IT. Nothing has changed there so I have no clue what you are complaining about. By the way, you will only get ganked if you are on a PVP server.
The first day I played this on my PVP realm, the Horde and Alliance were more interested in leveling than wasting time and killing eachother. That would be complete chaos caused by real players. There is occasional ganking but now that people are leveling up again the population is spreading out nicely throughout Outland.
I have yet to run into one bugged quest. Sure, spawn rates are rediculously fast in some places but come on, there are 40 players runnin around killin the same stuff. Good job on Blizzard's part to increase spawn rates this time for the starting quests in Hellfire Peninsula.
There are so many more items added to this expansion to drown you in. Some greens/blues are better than the lvl 60 epic set items that were in the original game. Now people who couldn't raid before can actually get very nice gear from the new dungeons. Another good job from Blizzard to help the casual gamer.
I haven't played either of the 2 new races so I won't comment on those.
The last couple things are the music and the scenery. The music is fantastic, from the opening title screen to every zone track in Outland. The voice acting of the bosses is pretty cool too. I hear the Blood Elf jokes are extremely gay though. The scenery of every zone of Outland is so colorful it looks 10 times better then anything in Azeroth. Even the new mobs all around are more detailed and have more color and thought put into them. From armored voidwalkers in Hellfire Peninsula to nasty creatures that look like that came out of War of the Worlds or something, this game has it all.
This expansion has everything we could have ever wanted in one from Blizzard. I'm sure this one will last another 2 years before the next expansion. Go get your copy NOW. You won't regret it. |
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