World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade (Expansion):

Being and avid World of Warcraft (WoW) player I have all of the currently available expansions and I awaiting the next (Mists of Pandria) with bated breath. In the mean-time I decided to review the three expansions that have been released.

The Burning Crusade (as mentioned above) is an expansion for the Massively-Multi-Player-Online-Role-playing-Game (MMORPG), World of Warcraft. I won't go into much detail about WoW here but there are plenty of reviews about it if you'd like to start off with one of those.

I also want to avoid this becoming too much of game-guide and try to stick to reviewing as opposed to explaining the game!

The Burning Crusade (henceforth referred to as TBC, acronyms will abound in this review) brings a whole new world for players to explore and raises the maximum level from 60 to 70. You get 2 new playable races, the cloven-hooved, blue skinned Draenai and the slightly emaciated Blood-Elves. No new classes were added in TBC but the expansion did allow Alliance (one of the factions in WoW) to play Shamans and Horde (the other faction) to play Paladins. If that wasn't enough you get new gear, new professions, new quests, a new battleground, new dungeons and new raids! One of the best additions to the game in my opinion was flying mounts (animals/machines that you can summon and ride to make getting around faster) although at the time these could only be used in Outland (the name given to the new world) and were shockingly expensive. Now you can fly anywhere and it's much much cheaper.

The over-all plot of TBC revolves around "The Burning Legion". This faction consists mainly of demons and comes from one of the Warcraft games which are the forerunners of WoW. The main bad guys in TBC are this legion and it allies which you can defeat by completing the raids in Outland.

For me TBC and Outland in general are very hit and miss, some things seem really well thought out but others seem umm ... maybe over-thought.

The 2 races seem well designed and both feature "attractive" character models which is good as previously horde characters were well, ugly whereas the Alliance had good-looking races. Before you get you knickers in a bunch I know beauty is subjective but I really believe that is how they were viewed and not as many people want to play an ugly character.

The dungeons are raids in TBC are perhaps my favourite in all the game so far. This is for a variety of reasons; They are quicker than the original game (vanilla) and they tend to follow a simple, linear path as opposed to the often meandering offerings in Vanilla that could go on and on till you lost the will to continue. I also like the way they tended to be in little groups which makes doing several in a row easier and much less time consuming than having to run all over the world!

More choice is always better in my opinion so I like the fact they opened up Shamans and Paladins to the opposing factions and added new professions.

The general scenery of TBC is not to my taste, there are a couple of areas I love (Nagrand for instance) but in the main the colours seem wrong and dreary to the point where I really don't like spending time there.

The outdoor PvP (player versus player, where players fight each other instead of game-controlled characters/monsters, known as non-player characters or NPCs) didn't work for long as when the initial glut of players levelling through Outland had dissipated not enough people were around to make it viable so now they are very frustrating and should, in my opinion, be removed altogether.

At the time TBC was refreshing and manage to make players re-engage with game but now I feel Outland gets over-looked as players strive to get to level 68 as fast as possible and move onto the content provided by Wrath of the Lich King (the next expansion).

For me I think TBC was an important part of WoW's history but now there are other expansions I would rather be playing in so Outland for me is now merely a quick stop to get those all important 8 levels!

If you want to move onto the next 2 expansions you will need to have TBC but I believe Blizzard now give it free when you purchase the original game.