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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.

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.

The best expansion to an MMORPG I have seen.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 10 / 11
Date: June 03, 2007
Author: Amazon User

ABOUT ME: I have played an Undead Rogue since day 1, and after around 20 days played at 70 I have taken the plunge to roll a paladin and I am loving it. Also, I have raided all dungeons up to Naxxramas.

The Burning Crusade is by far the best expansion, and expands the formula of World of Warcraft even more. Blizzard really fixed the problems with gear, the lack of endlevel dungeons, lack of raid content, boss design, and quest rewards. I will discuss these five things in detail.

~ GEAR ~
Pre-BC: The difference between raiders and casual players was huge. Players who werent decked in epic gear didnt stand a chance against other players who did. Even players in Tier 1 (easiest epic set to get at the time) could kill players in blues without even trying.
BC: The difference between raid gear and dungeon gear isnt very big any longer. I replaced my entire Tier 2 set and my epic weapons from raiding by the time I hit around level 66ish. After having over 20 days /played at 70, I have to say I am having a lot more to do at 70. Very good trinkets and weapons are easily obtainable by dungeon runs, and endgame content is fairly easy (with the exception of Serpentshrine Cavern, The Eye, and Black Temple). However, it is now fair competition between epic'd players and blue'd players. Gladiator PVP gear is amazingly powerful and the weapons are on-par with most of the weapons from Karazhan and Serpentshrine. If you have a team of skilled players, it wont be long to obtain these crazy Gladiator sets.

~ DUNGEONS ~
Pre-BC: After getting your attunements done, you had 2 options in terms of dungeons: do UBRS, scholomance, or stratholme for sub-par gear, or spend 4 hours a night raiding MC, BWL, AQ40, Naxx, ZG, and AQ20 for epic gear that is nearly 2x as powerful as non-epic gear. The dungeons were boring and got old quickly.
BC: As soon as you enter the outlands, you are greeted by 4 dungeon hubs of ~4 dungeons of different levels. The gear from these dungeons will most definitely replace your level 60 gear. Every level you gain you will be able to do another dungeon to get shiny new gear. And as soon as you hit 70, over 5 dungeons open up for you (all hosting INCREDIBLY powerful gear). There are plenty of quests for these dungeons, and they are all very interesting and look different from one another. They are all very straight forward and dont really get old.

~ RAID CONTENT ~
Pre-BC: Most people finished with content very quickly and ended up waiting for a new dungeon to come out. Yes, I was there when Blackwing Lair came out and it was BUGGY as hell and no one got ANYWHERE. Yes, I endured through the horribly designed pre-C'Thun trash in AQ40, and yes I was there when the C'Thun encounter was terribly buggy and no one could do anything in phase 2. Then Naxxramas came out and raiders rejoiced because it was the best dungeon made and I couldnt agree more.
BC: The new dungeons and bosses (which I will get into later) are amazing to say. The environments and atmosphere of each raid dungeon is different and they all have a certain feel to them. A Karazhan run feels like an adventure through an old abandoned run-down castle full of monsters and the undead. Gruuls lair feels like an epic journey through the cave of an incredibly powerful monster. Magtheridon's Lair (whom you are teased by in Blood Furnace) feels like a prison holding an ancient, wise, and destructive monster...and it is! These dungeons are all these things, they are alive, they are vibrant, and they are FUN.

~ BOSS DESIGN ~
Pre-BC: Ragnaros was the introduction of the horrible resistance checks in WoW. I can think of around 8-10 encounters that were resist checks and stupid gear checks (Vael/huhuran and twin emps/patchwerk, respectively) that prevented progression in the 4 40 mans. With the exception of Naxxramas and Blackwing Lair, all these dungeons were filled with trash mobs and you spent more time clearing trash than doing bosses. The bosses just were NOT fun.
BC: The boss encounters in the Burning Crusade are a HUGE improvement over their predecessors. New, different encounters such as netherspite and shade of aran, and just plain fun ones like the chess event are just a few to name. They are all very fun, and are definitely worth wiping on, the pleasure and burst of excitement when you down these challenging bosses after nights of wiping are awesome. Also, with the 10/25 man caps, it is much easier to start/join a raiding guild that gets somewhere. The content isnt as crazy as Naxxramas was at 60, but they still require the same level of organization, skill, and teamwork.

~ QUEST DESIGN ~
Pre-BC: Not much to say besides that the quests in Azeroth are stupid, annoying, and the rewards are HORRIBLE and USELESS. They are all very similar and they are very repetitive.
BC: All the quests are awesome and different. While you still have those grind + kill + get x of this quests, you have an assortment of new quests as well. You can summon bosses, and do bombing missions, they are all new, and they are all pure fun. I even love questing at 70, the money and even some of the loot are great to have. I am working on the Netherdrake questline at the moment, and I cant wait to have my own transparent giant dragon to fly around the outlands on. There are loads of quests leftover at 70, and they all have very good rewards at the end of each chain.

Why doesn't the Burning Crusade get a 5/5 overall? For one reason: they did not revamp Azeroth. Revisiting Azeroth at 70 is like attending a funeral, its stupid, and its pathetic how useless anything from Azeroth is at 70. The quests leading up to level 58 (when you can enter outlands)still have sub par rewards, and besides the opening of Karazhan and Caverns of Time, they have done absolutely NOTHING with the world outside of BC. I believe they really need to revamp the questlines and the rewards to make it more rewarding for people to go back to Azeroth to do the old quests and content.

Other than that, The Burning Crusade is the most extensive expansion to a game I have seen, and it is definitely worth the $40 to jump on the ship. I tip my hat to Blizzard for making an incredibly fun and rewarding game even better.

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!"

An OK expansion, but, really, nothing that new here...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 11 / 15
Date: August 23, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I was a big fan of WoW when it first came out. I had a great time with it, but there are several negatives that have finally outweighed the positives of WoW for me. The Burning Crusade adds new content (basically like the content of the original game) but does not address some basic problems with the game.

(1) WoW does not have enough safeguards against bad player behavior. The text profanity filter is inadequate and now the game has incorporated (or will soon incorporate) in-game voice chat. Sorry, but that is a real turn-off for me (and ought to be for anyone with kids playing this game). I am not interested in hearing heaven-knows-who saying heaven-knows-what via integrated voice chat. Gross and inappropriate text chat was bad enough.

(2) WoW is basically a grind-oriented game. People say there is a "story" here, but there really is not. There is a lore backdrop for the quests, but it is not a story per se. WoW is all about grinding for gold, gear, and experience/levels.

(3) WoW instances cannot be soloed. Thus, if you want to experience instance content, you must form a group of 4 to 5 players (at a minimum). Sometimes -- usually, in fact -- groups of players are great, but sometimes they are just awful. I enjoy multiplayer questing occasionally, but I do not want to be dependent on it to enjoy and experience game content.

(4) WoW instances take too damn long. Sorry, but they just do. Often, by the time you find a full group, you've run out of time to run the instance. Or you might get halfway through an instance, someone will drop out, and your group may well just fall apart or you have to wait again to find a player to fill in the missing slot. It's ridiculous and highly aggravating.

(5) WoW's Looking-for-Group mechanism is really lame for a game of this scope and with this many subscribers. The current Looking-for-Group tool is nonsensical, unecessarily complex, and not at all user friendly. As a result, only a small proportion of players even use it.

(6) WoW's next expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, looks completely unappealing to me, just more of the same for levels 70 to 80. It'll be a "must-have" for the dedicated WoW gamers, but for the rest of us? Meh. Not interested.

The Burning Crusade does nothing to rectify the basic problems with a game of this type. It added higher-level quests and instances of the same sort and variety as the original game, of course, but that's about it. I got approximately halfway through the new regions of the Burning Crusade and just got ... tired ... of it. And I was paying $15 a month ... for this?

I have played both WoW and Guild Wars extensively and, in my opinion, Guild Wars is clearly the better game: better story, better graphics, better and more varied options for various styles of play (solo/casual, group, guild, etc.), better combat system, sleeker armor, better (simpler) crafting system, better weapons acquisition, less grinding, more creative quests, no monthly fee, etc. And with the Eye of the North expansion pack coming out soon, well, this jaded ex-warcrafter will be headed for the new regions of Tyria with nary a look back.

If Blizzard wants to draw me and other casual/solo-oriented gamers back into the WoW universe, then they need to introduce summonable non-player characters (NPCs -- like the henchman or heroes you have in Guild Wars), allowing groups and/or individuals to fill the gaps in their teams as needed or form a complete team of their own and so have a reasonable chance of success for completing the various group quests and dungeons in WoW. But, hey, Guild Wars has that *now* ... :-)

BC...Good, but not looking forward to the grind.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: January 18, 2007
Author: Amazon User

So I went to the game store and waited in line to get my pre-order at release. Got home, installed it in about 45minutes or so with the updates, which was nice.

Lag wasn't bad on my server (Malygos) and had fun getting a few levels on a new Blood Elf paladin. Until the next day...tried to take my lvl 60 into Outlands...Questing was painful with all the lag, then the various world servers kept crashing, no mobs...or insanely fast respawns. No NPC's for quests, etc. I played the beta a bit and release was much improved over it, however I think that this kind of performance should be expected for the first days/weeks after release.

Overall the new content seems to be interesting and the quest reward items seem to be significantly better than what you could get raiding the 40 man instances, which is very depressing for those of us who spent MONTHS raiding to get the 'epic' gear just to have it replaced with green quest rewards in one day.

If you are addicted to World of Warcraft, I am sure you will become just as addicted to Burning Crusade. :)

Fun but not as much as the original

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: May 07, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I have fun playing this, but found the original more captivating. I was disappointed with the size of the new world, felt it was too small and was easy to explore very quickly. As for the new raid content, I consider it to be too complicated and elaborate in the extremely long chain of events that you have to accomplish just to move into each new raid dungeon. I also don't like the fact that you have to grind forever in the various 5 mans to get rep to unlock heroic mode to be able to get keys to various higher level raid dungeons. Grinding is the most boring thing in the world to me and this game has way too much of it. Overall, enjoyed a lot of the new world content but the elaborate raid system eventually drove me out of the game due to boredom.

A Fair review of Burning Crusade

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 12
Date: January 17, 2007
Author: Amazon User

For those who decide to blast this because of the problems during the first day take into account that the launch could have been a lot worse-and instead of waiting on 2 patches it could have been one huge patch like some other games I have seen in the past. Yes there were problems with the launching of burning crusade while I was installing the game I was thinking worse case that I would not be able to get access for a day or two later, yes I was kicked out of the game a few times Tuesday and yes the downloading the patch took over an hour thats why I gave this a 4 instead of 5. However other people were down loading that they may have closed the server for being slow.

On the merits of the expansion pack itself. From what I saw even for the casual player like me who has maybe up to 2 hours during a weekday I was totally impressed on what I saw. My first item from a quest, wasnt anything real sexy, but it was a big improvement from what I had over doing the instances on the mainland. As for scraping around for money, the quests here have bigger payouts.

The only real and major knock on this game then it can be said of any MMO some people i ran into lately have taken this game way to seriously and instead of being something to relax its become more like work. as of next week checking out age of conan and hopefully can get rid of these current headaches.

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