I should have done this write-up earlier but I was busy leveling

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade is the first expansion to Blizzard’s insanely popular MMORPG World of Warcraft which has over 8 million subscribers worldwide. If you have no idea what the original game is about or need some background, check this out. I played the original way too much, so naturally, I waited in line for the midnight launch. Standing in line at midnight for anything other than free head probably isn’t a good idea, and being there with about 75 other guys from that episode of South Park to get the game 8 hours early made me feel pretty self conscious. Oh well.

Overview
The game adds a ton of new features. The level cap was increased to 70, the Dark Portal opened, giving access to the Outlands, containing 7 new zones, a ton of new quests, instances and items, flying mounts (these are only usable in the Outlands and are a fucking gold sink, but are necessary to access certain ares of the game), a new profession: jewel crafting, socketed items (if you ever played Diablo II you remember these, you can add jewels to the sockets to add properties to the item), and two new playable races: the Blood Elves for the Horde and the Dranei for the Alliance.
Originally, each faction had a unique class: the Horde had shamans and the Alliance had paladins, and for the last two years, there has been bitching and complaining about the imbalance it causes between the factions. The basic difference being paladins are more useful in PVE and shamans are better at PVP. So, in the expansion, Blizzard has given both sides access to the class it didn’t have: Blood Elves can be paladins and Dranei can be shamans.
Visually, all of the new content looks amazing. The whole theme for Outlands is it used to the orc planet that exploded and is now just a series of these zones floating out in space, so they could do some pretty cool shit artistically. They’ve also kept their sense of humor.

Instances and raiding
There are 5 instanced zones that each contain multiple wings; The Caverns of Time, Hellfire Citadel, Coilfang Reservoir, Auchindoun, and Tempest Keep. New in the expansion is the option of running the 5-man wings of these zones in heroic mode. Heroic mode is a harder version of the instance tuned with better loot tuned for level 70 players. However to access the heroic difficulty level, a key is required by all the players which is obtained from the quartermaster of the corresponding faction the instance gives reputation from.
One of the biggest changes in the game is the shrinking of raid sizes from 40 players to 25. The advantages of this are that it is easier to organize a fewer amount of players, enabling a greater number of them see end game content, as well as allowing for greater detail in boss fights. For example, the final raid zone to be added to the original, Naxxramas, was the best that Blizzard did. But only a very small percentage of the game’s player base ever saw the place. However, for the last 2 years all raids have been 40-man and end game guilds recruited players accordingly. Since it really isn’t viable for one guild to run multiple raids, it’s going to cause lots of drama.
As far as raids go, Gruul’s Lair and Magtheridon’s Lair require no attunement, meaning that all you need to enter is to be level 70 and in a raid group. However the rest of the raids do. Karazhan (which is only 10-man), Serpentshrine Cavern, The Eye of the Storm, and Caverns of Time: Mount Hyjal all require quest chains to complete attunement. There are also a couple of outdoor raid bosses, which are always fun on PVP servers (it’s hard to sound sarcastic in print).

PVP
When the original game launched, PVP was sort of an after thought. Players from opposing factions could kill each other anywhere in the world outside of the starting zones (on PVP servers), but there was really no incentive to do so, other than to be a dick, and because its fun. Blizzard tried to step it up with the introduction of an honor system, and rewards based on it, as well as battlegrounds specifically for pvp, but this disjointed system upset a lot of the players and basically rewarded time played instead of skill.
The expansion was designed with PVP specifically in mind. Many zones have PVP objectives that grant players a bonus. For example, in Hellfire Peninsula there are towers that when captured give a damage buff to the faction that controls them. In Nagrand, there is a city called Halaa devoted entirely to PVP, control of which constantly goes back and forth between the Alliance and the Horde.
Also, Blizzard has introduced an arena system. These are 2v2, 3v3, and 5v5. Based on who wins and loses the players can rank up or down on the arena ladder, and then get matched against similarly ranked players. The arena points that are awarded can be turned in for weapons and armor, similar to honor tokens from regular PVP.
Overall, the expansion is awesome. It offers a lot of options for both casual and hardcore players, and adds that extra special pinch of sugar to the crack that was the original World of Warcraft to keep people playing for another year. or until the next expansion.

Here are some of the nicer screenshots I took.
Welcome to Outland
Blades Edge Mountains
The Blood Furnace
Durn
Mana Tombs
Opening of the Dark Portal
Stormspire
Netherstorm
Zangarmarsh