World of Warcraft has become one of the more commercially popular MMOs out there, with its publicity spanning from South Park to commercials integrating scenes from the movie Office Space. And now we finally get the release of the first major expansion, The Burning Crusade, which was delayed a bit from initial projections but still in time for holiday shoppers to pre-order it!
New zones, races, and tradeskills are some of the major updates to the game, not to mention raising the level cap to 70. So definitely expect to see many level 60 players running around, as well as lots of new Blood Elves and Draenei. And don’t be too daunted by half-naked Blood Elves and Draenei females dancing on mailboxes, it’s to be expected. But perhaps I’m just jaded from my experiences in online gaming!
With an updated splash screen, opening cinematic, and a snazzed up soundtrack, BC is definitely something to look forward to. However, due to the large volumes of users, you might want to expect some growing pains in the first few weeks. I experienced many disconnections and server downtimes on the day of the launch. So I’d suggest not getting involved in anything big right now. You can try starting new characters in the new races, but expect lots of crowds as you try to complete the newbie quests.
So here’s what I can tell you about the new stuff in the game so far:
New Races: Draenei and Blood Elves
If you’re a WoW nut like me, you’ve been looking at footage of the new races from E3 and other sources. If you’re even more of a nut, you’ll recognize the dance moves from popular sources such as Napoleon Dynamite, and some more obscure ones such as the male Draenei dance from a popular Indian pop star. It’s actually a rather addicting song and when I play it I can’t stop listening to it – though the video of the song makes me laugh sometimes.
Anyway the new member of the alliance is the Draenei. You may have seen some new Draenei NPCs in the past week or so, as well as their new home city, The Exodar, on the world map on an island called Azuremyst Isle, off of Kalimdor and pretty close to Darnassus. The story is that they crash landed on Azeroth after their homeworld was destroyed by the Burning Legion. They made friends with the Alliance to help in the fight.
The Draenei lands are very crystalline, and almost remind me of the Night Elf lands of Teldrassil and Ashenvale, except with more purple crystals sprouting around the terrain. There’s also some new creature models like fluttering giant moths and weird “mutations” that I can’t really describe, but boy do they make you want to kill them. The Exodar itself has an ethereal feel, and don’t freak out too much when you first step into the city and its see-through floors.
The major thing about the Draenei is that they are the first Alliance race to have Shaman as one of the available classes. They also have pretty strong racial abilities: Gift of the Naaru, a heal-over-time spell which automatically scales up as you level, additional jewelcrafting skill, and a 1% chance to hit party buff (works like the Paladin auras).
In contrast to the Draenei, the Blood Elves are the new members of the Horde who are probably more interested in self-preservation than anything. Their original city were destroyed by the Scourge, the evil undead forces (whom the Undercity also battles against), and due to some injustices from humans, join the Horde. They’re also depicted as addicts to arcane magic, which explains a lot of the scenery of their city (floating flower pots, broomsticks sweeping the floors).
Their lands are in the bright and lush Eversong Woods, far north on the Eastern Kingdoms continent. You get a glimpse of the ruins of Silvermoon, which stands right next to the rebuilt Silvermoon City. If you’re wondering how one gets up there past the high level zones of the Eastern and Western Plaguelands, you’ll notice in Silvermoon City is an “orb of translocation” which transports you just inside the Ruins of Lordaeron in Undercity.
Blood Elves can also be Paladins, a new class addition to the Horde forces. Their racial abilities to mana tap and silence also make them formidable in combat.
Of course with new races, comes new mounts. Draenei have elekks, which look like mini-elephants, and the Blood Elves get hawkstriders, which are basically ugly but colorful bird-like creatures.
New Tradeskills
This new tradeskill allows you to create items such as rings, neckwear, and trinkets. This is a nice tradeskill to have especially when neckwear and rings are not as easy to come by in the lower levels. Jewelcrafters can also create figurines that are worn as trinkets to give additional enhancements for the jewelcrafter. Obviously the partner tradeskill is mining, where you can get the metals as well as raw gems from mines.
Another major enhancement jewelcraft provides is the ability to cut gems for socketed items. If you’ve ever played Diablo (another fantastic Blizzard game), you’ll get an idea of how socketed items work. The only real downside is that most socketed items are higher level items. However, leatherworkers, blacksmiths, and tailors can create socketed items as well. The jewelcrafter just cuts the gem ready to be socketed – but it’s also possible to find cut gems as drops from dungeon bosses.
Just so there don’t get to be hugely inflated prices on the auction for gemstones, jewelcrafters can use an ability called prospecting, which uses up 5 ores of a mined metal to ‘search’ for a gemstone. I’m not sure of the success rate, but it’s at least another way to get rid of excess tin ore!
There’s also the ability to learn Master First Aid in Outland, which means getting as much runecloth as you can to train yourself up to 330 once you get the skill in order to get to the next level of bandages (Netherweave).
New Zones
Along with the new zones for the Draenei and Blood Elf lands, there is also an entirely new continent tailored for the high level player. Outland is only accessible through the Dark Portal in the Blasted Lands. Older players will remember this Dark Portal guarded by dozens of elite demons, making it near impossible to reach. Now this portal is no longer guarded, and players higher than level 58 can reach Outland. There’s a pretty clear cut path to the portal also, and a few NPCs standing at the bottom of the big pit that holds the portal. Run into the portal, and welcome to Hellfire Peninsula.
In Outland, level 70 players can obtain flying mounts which allow the player to fly around freely around Outland. This of course comes with a hefty price tag of at least 900-1000 gold, which is supposedly not difficult once you are level 70. Of course, I’ve never managed to procure more than 300 gold at one time, but I guess if you make an effort to save up, it shouldn’t be a problem. But before any of that happens, you have to enter the portal and fly to your respective faction’s outpost (Honor Hold, Thrallmar). As you enter the portal you might be a bit frightened to see “skull” level scary demon monsters straight ahead – thankfully you don’t have to worry about those (at least not right now) and the NPCs tell you to go to the flight master and get your free flight path to your outpost.
There’s also an indicator of Alliance and Horde forts at the top of your screen once you enter Outland through the portal, which tells you how many of the three forts each faction controls from PvP battling in the middle of Hellfire Peninsula. If your faction controls them all, you get an extra special buff.
Now I haven’t gotten much further than Hellfire Peninsula, but if you’ve shelved one of your level 60 characters on the backburner (like I have), you might want to dig them up and do a few quests. You might find that the gear that you get from quests is quite good compared to what you’re used to on the home planet, especially for the casual player!
Etc. Etc.
Obviously the level cap increase to 70 has some additional trickling effects: guards in cities have increased levels, the talent trees for all classes have been expanded. There’s also additional changes to PvP play, including Gladiatorial arenas which allow groups of players to comete against each other. The honor points earned from PvP also do not degrade over time as they used to, which helps when you are trying to save up for those PvP purchases.
You’ll also notice that you have to upgrade your account before playing – it’s not enough to just install the BC expansion. There are several opportunities to do this: during installation a dialog box asks you to upgrade with your game’s key, as well as a splash screen that appears after installation. There’s no additional cost in doing this upgrade, so don’t worry when this shows up.
The BC expansion also installs version 2.0 of the game, which means that there are a couple of previous patches that need to be applied after installation. For my installation, I had to re-install patch 2.03 and 2.05. The game should be able to find those patches on your hard drive, since they’ve been already applied.
I’m hoping that the servers will be more stable in the coming weeks, but like I said, don’t expect things to be perfect. I had a fun experience trying to take the new boat from Auberdine to Azuremyst Isle (the far pier), where after zoning I ended up somewhere in Stonetalon Mountains and died falling through the world. Fortunately they took down the server for a moment and the next time I tried that, I survived the trip!
Overall, the many new features in the expansion are very well-thought out, especially the new quests. I was especially impressed with some of the new Draenei quests, one which has you running around all over the island looking for totems so you can learn the furlbog language, and one of those times you turn into a shadow panther-like form which distorts the look of the world and reminds me of the world Frodo sees in the LOTR movie.
Happy Exploring!