Having played World of Warcraft for just under a year before the release of the Burning Crusade expansion, you can imagine just how excited I was about it. For months, I had read the thoughts of those lucky enough to have a Beta key and I marvelled at the amazing landscapes of the new continent of Outland. So excited was I that I stood in line at my local EB store at midnight amongst the other geeks and nerds and those who lack personal hygiene to get my copy, so I could be one of the first to play. I got it home and quickly began installation. It was going ok until it crashed at 56%. Frustrated I rebooted and tried again, this time successfully. I had tried hard to avoid hearing anything about the Burning Crusade trailer so that I could fully enjoy the moment when I had finally finished updating WoW.

The new hawt race for the Horde, the Blood Elves.

I have heard many people repeat the last line of the trailer where Illidan says 'You are not prepared' as a reference to how unprepared people thought Blizzard were with the expansion's release. I believe that Blizzard did an amazing job over the preceding months upgrading server hardware to accommodate the massive influx of new accounts, as well as the people who always said they would come back when Burning Crusade was released. Sure, Hellfire Peninsula was a little laggy at times but for the most part, the servers were admirably stable.

As mentioned earlier, the new continent of Outland was the main focus of this expansion and what a focus it was. I am not sure how they compare to the zones of Azeroth, but the Outland zones feel HUGE. This is a good thing too, because with the number of people trying to complete quests, it was often a titanic battle to get that last item, or kill that last mob. What I did hate about the expansion is what sort of player it turned me into at times. Far too many players, Horde and Alliance alike, were too ready to ninja kills and do whatever it took in order to complete their quests, and at times, especially in Hellfire Peninsula you had to become a little mean if you were to get anything done. A few smart people avoided the lag and high population of Hellfire Peninsula and went straight for the next zone Zangarmarsh. As its name suggests, it is a large marsh which feels very tranquil with its overriding purple colour scheme.

The next 2 zones were just below Zangarmarsh as my favourites, those being Terrokar and Nagrand; Nagrand especially is an amazing zone with some awesome quests. My only criticism is that it felt a bit short. Terrokar contains a major city called Shattrath City. What makes this city unique (and the new Ironforge of the expansion) are the portals to every capital city in the game located at the centre of Shattrath. Players can easily travel to any capital city very quickly which is why many players set their hearthstone location there to enable fast travel around the entire WoW world.

In Azeroth, there were a few zones I greatly enjoyed, but a good deal of them felt like a grind. I am pleased to note that I found only one zone that was like that for me, which was Blades Edge Mountains. It would not be so bad except for the way it is broken up into three separate sub-zones with a really funky graveyard setup that could make death a time consuming issue. There were some really fun quests though, especially around the little Gnome encampment of Toshley's Station. The final two zones are Netherstorm and Shadowmoon Valley. Netherstorm is a much easier zone so most people went there. The unique arrangement of floating islands could have made this zone worse than Blades Edge if you died while questing, but Blizzard did a really good job on this zone and it rates as one of my favourites as well.

Just one of the new and original foes you face in Outland. This is a Gronn

The five-man instance dungeons are very well done in the expansion. Blizzard chose to create separate wings like they did with Dire Maul, so with a competent group, almost every instance wing can be completed in around an hour which is much better than say an instance like Blackrock Depths which could take many hours to complete if you were to attempt everything. The first instances players came across were Hellfire Citadel's Ramparts and Blood Furnace - both are easy and a great way to upgrade some of those items to make further levelling easy. In Zangarmarsh and Coilfang Reservoir, Slave Pens and Underbog are the next challenges faced to would be travellers. Again, with competent groups these were very easy dungeons.

The first real challenge in Burning Crusade five-man instances are located in Auchindoun, Terrokar Forest. Mana-Tombs, Auchenai Crypts and Sethekk Halls are all a little more difficult to complete, but are still no match for any competent group of players. The most challenging instances are located in Netherstorm within Tempest Keep. All these instances are only accessible via Flying Mounts (or a patient Warlock with some friends) and represent the pinnacle of difficulty in standard five-mans. The two easier ones, The Botanica and The Mechanar all require groups who know how to play their class in order to complete in a timely manner. Completing both (along with the quest) grants the key to access the final five-man wing of Tempest Keep, The Arcatraz which is arguably the most difficult of the five-mans. Other level 70 ranged five-mans include Shattered Halls in Hellfire Citadel, Steamvaults in Coilfang Reservoir and Shadow Labyrinth in Auchindoun.

Of course all of these are easy compared to a new addition to five-man instances in the expansion, Heroic Mode. Once you get to Revered reputation with any of the major factions in the expansion, you can buy the Heroic mode key for that faction (For instance, Cenarion Expedition Revered grants the Heroic Mode key for Coilfang Reservoir). Heroic increases both the quality of the loot and the mobs level range to 70-72. For instances that already contain level 70-72 mobs, it increases the health and damage of these mobs considerably. In my first attempt at Underbog on Heroic, the first mob crushing blew the tank for 13k which is a considerable amount of damage, even with plate mitigation. Of course, the rewards are worth it and completing Heroic mode instances grants tokens that can be turned in for some pretty good epics, plus, the final boss of each wing is guaranteed to drop an epic item. It is also the only reliable way to get a Primal Nether, something which is required in many high level crafting recipes. Heroic mode instances are also a key ingredient to end game raiding in Burning Crusade.

Access to Serpentshrine Cavern, the 3rd major 25-man raid dungeon (Behind Gruul and Magtheridon) requires killing at least the first boss in Slave Pens Heroic to talk to a guy who gives the quest. While the quest itself does not require you to complete anything on Heroic, the next major 25-man raid, the Eye of Tempest Keep, requires you to complete all of the lower level Tempest Keep instances on Heroic mode which is no easy feat.

The new Alliance race, the Draenei

In the Azeroth, raid guilds had Molten Core, Onyxia, Blackwing Lair, AQ40 and Naxxramas to keep them busy. Of course, all this content was patched into the game over a period of many months. It feels like in Burning Crusade that Blizzard decided to overload us with new content so at launch, guilds had the 10-man Karazhan, Gruul's Lair, Magtheridon, Serpentshrine Cavern as well as the Eye of Tempest Keep - an amazing amount of content that will keep people busy for many months. At the time of writing, just the first boss of Serpentshrine Cavern has been killed, and only within the last few days has Magtheridon been killed which granted the first people access to the Eye of Tempest Keep. It will be months before even the top guilds have completed all the current content, and it was announced that the first major patch of Burning Crusade, 2.1 will include the next 25-man raid, the Black Temple located in Shadowmoon Valley where you will face the demon you saw in the opening cinematic, Illidan. Beyond this is the current ultimate in raids, Mount Hyjal and the little known Zul'Aman. I am sure there will eventually be other raids released before the next expansion so raid guilds have plenty to keep them busy.

Another major addition to the game is Flying Mounts, which allow you to do just that, fly. It is an amazing addition that makes many things so much easier, especially farming as it allows you to drop down to where you want to be in order to avoid clearing the place of mobs, and then to quickly remount and lift off to safety. As mentioned earlier, Flying Mounts are required to access some content in the expansion and most people will end up buying at least the standard mount. This costs a mere 100 gold which is cheap, but what makes it expensive is the skill to ride it costs 800 gold for a total cost of 900 gold. For veterans of the original game, this sounds like an extreme amount, but you get so much gold from quests, junk grays off mobs, and quest rewards that you don't use, that I had 1200 gold by the time I 'dinged' at 70. The average player should have no problem having the required amount of gold as long as they don't go nuts and buy stuff to level their professions. What will be an issue for many players are the Epic Flying Mounts. Ordinary Flying Mounts have a maximum speed of 60% of walking pace which is the same as level 40 ground mounts. This makes travelling with them painful at times, but for the huge fee of 5200 gold (On top of the 900 for the ordinary mount and skill) you can buy an Epic Flying Mount which gives a speed increase of 280% which is roughly the same speed of the flight mater creatures used to take a person between flight paths. While this will be out of reach for many players, with time a lot of people will have their Epic Flying Mounts. Farming and professions will make this a lot easier to achieve though.

One of the Mana Forges in Netherstorm

Speaking of professions, the expansion introduced a new one: Jewelcrafting. From 1-300, this means using items mined from Azeroth mining nodes to create rings, trinkets and neckpieces, some of which are really good. From 300 to the new professions cap of 375 you create powerful jewels to put into the new socketed items introduced in the expansion. These boost the base stats of items, by a significant margin in some cases, and are very well worth it. You can also create very powerful trinkets and other items in the higher level ranges. The overall quality of crafted items has been massively improved in the expansion. All the crafting professions will give you items that are equivalent to any of the lower tier 25-man raid dungeons which is a big improvement over the state of crafting before the expansion when there was very little gear that anyone could use if you had any sort of good quality raid gear.

The final additions to the expansion are the new races, the Draenei for the Alliance and the Blood Elves for the Horde. For the first time, the Horde has been given access to Paladins and their awesome buffs and the Alliance have been given access to Shaman and their totems. Many people have re-rolled new toons to make use of these powerful new classes and time will tell just how much of a difference it will make having them there. Each class is well thought out with a great background story and the quests in the starting zones are amongst the best in the game. The zone designers also did a fantastic job of setting the mood in these zones from the small islands of the Draenei to the battered and war torn lands of the Blood Elves. My only criticisms with the new zones are that they only cover the first 20 levels of a new character's life so once those are complete, you must go back to ordinary Azeroth and complete the old content again. It would also have been nice to see some new low level five-man instances outside of the old Deadmines for Alliance and Wailing Caverns/Ragefire Chasm for the Horde.

PvP has also been given a big boost in the expansion. Hellfire Peninsula, Terrokar Forest and Nagrand all contain new world PvP objectives that provide useful new items for those that invest the time to acquire them. The two major additions to PvP are Arenas and the new Battleground Eye of the Storm. Eye of the Storm combines objectives from both Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin in a zone that is probably 2/3 the size of Alterac Valley. Your side gains points for controlling more towers then the other side, but you also gain bonus points for capturing the flag and returning it to a specific spot. This makes for very exciting matches. Arenas are very different from the old style of PvP Battlegrounds in that you form into specific 2v2, 3v3 or 5v5 teams and fight against others from both the Horde and Alliance. The Arena PvP epic rewards are very good and compare well with epic items acquired from raiding.

In conclusion, the first expansion for World of Warcraft is a massive success as can be seen in the sales records it broke after release. The servers were remarkably stable considering, and Blizzard has tried very hard to minimize the impact on its players. Even server queues have been minimised because of the free player transfers Blizzard used to lower the populations of popular servers. It is hard to find any real criticisms and everything feels polished, but it obviously isn't perfect. I averaged about 10-15 hours to gain a level by the time I hit 70 which is quite a long time if you can only manage a few hours here and there to play. But with the rest XP these players will get, they will find it easier to level in the long run. The instance wings and shorter raids are also designed and built around the casual player which gives those with less time to devote to the game a chance to acquire epic quality items.