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Lots of New Content

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 133 / 140
Date: January 18, 2007
Author: Amazon User

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

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 17 / 19
Date: January 17, 2007
Author: Amazon User

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.

Worth the wait

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 21 / 30
Date: February 02, 2007
Author: Amazon User

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.

never preorder expansion software from amazon..

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 24
Date: January 18, 2007
Author: Amazon User

preordered 2 months in advance and still havent received it, from tracking i can't even be sure its actually even been sent out yet....
1st day out and i am sitting in ironforge watching peeps who are already 65 and not even knowing when i will get the expansion, well it plain sucks.... local stores didnt have it either.

So basically i recommend buying preorders from *gaming sellers only* if you expect to have it on time! Seems they are the only ones who understand the concept that preorder means its in the buyers hands the day BEFORE release, or at least the same day.

It DOES live up to the hype.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 17 / 23
Date: January 21, 2007
Author: Amazon User

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.

Expansion pack is wow

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: January 23, 2007
Author: Amazon User

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!"

NO PROBLEMS OUT OF THE BOX

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 30
Date: January 18, 2007
Author: Amazon User

No problems on a 2 week old server. Only died twice .

BEST GAME EVER

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 51
Date: January 16, 2007
Author: Amazon User

PEOPLE IF U THINK THAT PEOPLE THAT PLAY THIS GAME R NERDS U R WRONG ! BC introduces a who;e new alinment to wow . with the lvl cap riased to 70 all wow players no that this will not be the last inraisement in lvl. with 2 new totaly cool!!! new character!!! -and now the horde have pallys!!!-and the alliance have shaman!!! it is evern better than ever! i am looking foward to the next one _ rn't u ?

A Returning Player's Perspective

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: January 30, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I consider myself a casual gamer. I swore off ever trying an MMO for a long time - and have bounced from MMO to MMO sort of trying out what each has to offer. WoW is the game that I've found myself coming back to more than once.

Having lost my original account due to a hack, followed by a subsequent banning by Blizzard because of the actions of another player - it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I decided to put my fate back into range of the itchy trigger finger of Blizzard.

I spent nearly $100 on launch day for a new copy of WoW, the Burning Crusade, and a time card. I have had so much fun, for so much time over the past couple of weeks with the game that I do not have any regrets over my purchase.

I created a Blood Elf, one of the new races added with the expansion. The back story of the 'pretty' Horde race is captivating and adds a lot of depth to what at first glance seems like a simplistic game.

True enough, the game is very simple. I find myself enjoying a formula that "just works" however, because Blizzard seems to have balanced a multitude of systems, story, quests, etc. and if it took the old K.I.S.S. principle to do so, so be it.

The new starting area for the Blood Elves is gorgeous, and the quests in the first couple of starting areas around Silvermoon will take you nearly to 19 or 20 before you have to set off for the Barrens/Stonetalon/and the areas you are probably used to.

As always, even if I am doing a random quest in the middle of nowhere, it is almost assured that I will come across more players on the same quest that I can group with if the difficulty is too high.

These quests and activities you perform are not "Oblivion" deep, but they are sufficiently compelling to keep you interested in what happens as a result of your quests, or starting another quest in the middle of another that causes you to have to improvise and deviate from your plan prior to heading in.

So the breakdown is - if you've never played WoW, I can still recommend the original game and this expansion ($60 combined) for players. If $40 is too much for the additional content in music, areas, races, professions, levels, resources, items, etc. then I feel like you will be missing out on a larger part of the overall game that the Burning Crusade has added for players.

Does it add enough content to justify the price? Yes - I can say that this expansion does. I cannot speak for future expansions, but if Blizzard puts the same time and effort into the small details as they did in this expansion - WoW will be a destination many of us will take for some time to come.

Ugh....Patches

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 8
Date: January 30, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I loaded this for my son yesterday and he was so psyched to finally get it. But we had to handshake,download and restart to get through all of the patches about 6 times before he could finally play. We just kept holding our breath hoping the next time would be trick. He was rewarded after about an hour and a half (we do have high speed adsl). With that said it was totally worth the wait. Just be patient and the longer you wait to get it, the more patches you'll have to get through!

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