Review, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade - An Easy Button!

Review: January 16, 2007. The Burning Crusade Expansion for World of Warcraft was released on January 16, 2007. The hype surrounding the release of this game led me to pre-order the game from ebgames.com. I selected overnight shipping as I wanted the game as soon as possible. Unfortunately, the UPS flight was late and my order did not get out until the late morning shipment, so it arrived mid-afternoon. It was essentially a waste of ten dollars since I could have picked the game up at any Target or other store for face value without any hassles.

The game installed easily. It went right over the top of the regular installation. I installed it on both my laptop and my desktop. My desktop went into the default “Program Files” directory, but on my laptop I loaded the game into a “WoW” directory directly off of the root drive.

The installer determined this automatically and the install was flawless.

After loading from the CDs, I was forced to reload last week’s patch and after that reloaded, it also forced me to download one more update and installed that update as well.

These were minor things and on my desktop this process took no more than 20-30 minutes (I even left the house to get beer while the previous patch was reloading).

The intro video was cool. It ended with, “You are NOT prepared!” The only problem is it uses a new codec so you cannot view it later using Media Player or even VLC player. I would assume you can load it from the WoW launcher but I haven’t tried yet.

Upon logging in, I immediately created a Blood Elf Paladin. Why? Because I really can’t stand Elves. The only thing more despicable than an Elf, is a Paladin, thus, I created the most wretched racial and class combination I could think to create.

It was ridiculous from the beginning.

I started with a 2h sword and basic armor. In the noob quests, all of the mana wyrms are immediately accessible – not more than two steps away from your quest-giver. You are trained to use your mana tap right away. This is a racial ability that can be used as a ranged attack. It also gives you a minor intellect buff right.

One of the drawbacks of being a Paladin had previously been an inability to do any damage with ranged weapons, but with a ranged spirit tap, Blood Elf Paladins will readily have an ability to pull mana-using creatures.

I took my first two Blood Elf paladins to level 6. The quests are fine. I think they are as easy as any other noob quests – and spawning MOBs are spread out enough that if you wander around for five minutes or so, you can usually find an area to yourself to slay the beasts.

The only drawback was when I was on one of the servers there were so many people running around to kill one of the “unique” spawns that you literally had to stand in line to get the kill.

To fight standing in line, I invited the closest four people to a group. They accepted and we all struck at once, thus, we got the kill since collectively we hit the hardest. I did run into one jerk who was a level above everyone else and he was killing the unique spawn over and over to prevent others from getting the kill. I told him he was a jerk, made my group, got my kill and moved on.

It helps if you have a mage or a rogue with you for this quest since they can strike fast and hard.

It also helps if your dipstick mage (A.N., you know who you are) is not running around on different platforms killing randomly when he SHOULD be standing next to you to kill the unique spawn.

This takes you to level four or five…depending on how much random killing you did.

You move to the new area, south from the noob area, and you get more quests, an Inn (to get rest and set your Hearthstone) and a mailbox! This is the part where you have your other ‘toons send money and storage bags to your new Paladin (Pally for you gamers)!

The quests from the Inn will take you to at least level six and then prompt you to move out to the North Sanctum. After I hit level six the second time, I decided to just explore.

I found a new pet vendor (50sp) and bought a little dragonling. It was swell. He follows me around flying and twirling.

Other things to know about Blood Elves: They spin a 360 circle when jumping, when they dance, they do the Napolean Dynamite dance, they have a “silence” racial ability which I did not test.

All in all, the Blood Elves will be a rocking race to take to level seventy. If you choose to be a Pally you will finally have an “easy button” class to take you all over Azeroth.

One last item: Blizzard gave a nice parting gift in the install box - two keys for complimentary ten-day trials for any friends who have not yet been intriduced to the wonders of Azeroth. The keys are on printed cards, so wou can actually give them to people which is a nice touch…since I e-mailed out trial keys last year and everyone ignored their e-mail and I lost the ability to grant free keys.

On the traditional 5-star rating system, the Burning Crusade Expansion gets 5-stars.