Yashima Plays

Since everyone seems to be doing Burning Crusade Reviews right now, maybe I could or should do one as well.

Burning Crusade brought us huge changes from Classic WoW. Of course there were 10 more levels and all of Outland for us to explore. Incredibly dense Zones where one would always meet the other faction and never lack for quests to level. For those who didn’t want to become 70 right away we saw two new races added to the mix: the Alliance got the Draenei and their Shamans and the Horde got the pretty Blood Elves and their Paladins. There were new quest types like “Bombing Runs” and at 70 we got “Daily Quests” to earn gold the “easy” way.

We saw old content nerfed: nearly all the old group quests were reduced to solo status. Stranglethorn – most well-known for being the haven of gankers – got an alternative with the Dustwallow Marshes, which were finally more than just the zone one needed to ride through to get to Onyxia’s lair. At the same time the experience needed to get to level 50 was reduced so much that leveling a new character became a breeze and old instances were largely empty and gathered dust.

In PvP there was a total revamp of the Honor System – which actually preceded BC by a bit – and the addition of Arenas. There were also more World PvP Objectives. While the Honor System tended to be farmed a lot (the famous AFK Alterac Farmers) battlegrounds were rather successfull in BC and saw a lot of players because the nice loot that was added each ‘Season’. Arenas had a few starting problems  with people gaming the matching system and lots of balancing issues. World PvP objectives were largely ignored on our server.

In PvE we had a completely new end-game reduced from mostly 40-man instances to 25-man and two 10-mans added into the mix. We saw Heroic Instances for the first time and “Badge” Loot became available. We saw just as many guilds destroyed by Kara as there were destroyed by Molten Core.

Professions saw a few nice additions as well: we got Jewelcrafting – a completely new profession that made Mining even more profitable than it was before. All professions got a few nice perks added for those who learned them and specialities were added to many professions. There were very powerful BoP Epics for crafters – so powerful that Tailoring became a must for caster classes for a long time.

So now the Burning Crusade is over, Illidan finally defeated and the Lich King ready to challenge us to come to Northrend to do the same to him. We’re all 70, have a bunch full of alts to choose from and hopefully our guilds survived the struggles to get here.

I could be writing till tomorrow morning but now I am going over to the local gaming store to see the crowds waiting for midnight – hoping there are no crowds and maybe snatching a Collector’s Edition yet.

See you tomorrow in Northrend! Good Night!