World Of Warcraft Expansion: Burning Crusade Reviews

3 comments on “World Of Warcraft Expansion: Burning Crusade Reviews”

1. 146 of 152 people found the following review helpful:

   
   Lots of New Content, January 18, 2007

   By 

   Bobbie Lynn (USA) –

   Fun: 

   This review is from: World Of Warcraft Expansion: Burning Crusade (DVD-ROM)

   This expansion pack introduces the new continent of Outland. This continent can only be accessed with a character that is at least level 58. If you’re either just starting to play World of Warcraft, or you have no characters even close to level 58, you may just want to wait to buy the expansion at a later time.

   However, the expansion also grants you access to two new races, the Draenei (Alliance) and the Blood Elves (Horde). You won’t be able to create characters of either of these races if you don’t have the expansion. So, if you want to play one of them you’ll need to get it. If you’re a new player who’s just trying out the game, I’d suggest just getting the basic version and playing one of the original races, rather than spending the extra $40 before you even know whether you like the game.

   You should also be warned that if you’re upgrading from the original version of the game, even if your copy is already fully patched, you’ll have to install the patches again after installing Burning Crusade. This is because they printed the CDs with version 2.0 of the client you use to play the game, but they’ve issued patches after that which you need to log into the server (up to version 2.05 as of this writing). If you look in the Patches sub-folder of your World of Warcraft folder on your computer, you should already have some of the patches present and be able to simply double click them to install. If you were to try to log in before doing that, you’ll have to redownload the patch before it installs instead, which will naturally take more time.

   Some people have complained about lag, crashes, and lines to log into the more popular servers. These are all short term problems. A lot of people are very excited about the expansion, and so there are far more players than usual logged in at once, which is straining the servers. Give it a week or two after release and it should begin to settle down.

   For the basic version of WoW, the level cap is 60. If you install the expansion, the cap is increased to 70. If you have a level 60 character and want to continue to advance, you MUST upgrade your account with the expansion pack.

   Additional level brackets for the Battlegrounds (Player vs Player areas) have been added to accomodate the new higher levels in the game. Also, a new battleground called Eye of the Storm has been made available for characters of level 61 and above. Additionally, around the zones of the new Outland continent, there are PvP tasks you can perform such as taking over control of towers, with the faction that controls all of the towers in a zone gaining a small bonus such as a 5% increase to damage anywhere in that zone.

   They’ve also added a number of new instances/dungeons. The new ones have two settings, allowing you to go through them at either ‘normal’ difficulty, or ‘heroic’ difficulty. The heroic setting makes the enemies tougher, and provides increased treasure rewards. This keeps the instances useful for advancement over a larger span of levels than would normally be the case.

   Most players will find that, as they do quests in Outland, they quickly begin to get armor that’s superior to what they’ve previously been using. The monetary rewards in the new areas are also increased. Additionally, professions have been expanded to cover the additional levels in the game and tailoring has been expanded to include specialties similar to the way blacksmithing and leatherworking work.

   Flying mounts are available on the continent of Outland for those who purchase them. However, these are not available to be used in the two original continents. This is because those areas were designed with the intention that they would only be accessed from the ground and a lot of work would have been required to make all of the quests and visuals work as intended if characters were permitted to fly around freely.

   Be cautious about buying this item used. Each copy of the expansion includes a key code that is required to upgrade your account to allow access to the new content. If you buy a used copy of the software where the seller has already used that key to upgrade his account, you’ll still be able to install the software upgrade, but the lack of an unused key will mean that you won’t be able to apply the upgrade to your account that’s required to actually access the new content.

   If you install the expansion on a computer where more than one account is used (for example, if you and your spouse each has your own account) then you can only use the key to upgrade one of those accounts. The other account will continue to work, but it will not be given access to the expansion pack content. Therefore, you need to obtain one expansion pack for each account you or your household has if you want to access the new content on all of them.

   Edit: As of January 22, 2007…

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2. 16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

   
   The best expansion to an MMORPG I have seen., June 2, 2007

   By 

   M. Smith –
   
     

   Fun: 

   This review is from: World Of Warcraft Expansion: Burning Crusade (DVD-ROM)

   ABOUT ME: I have played an Undead Rogue since day 1, and after around 20 days played at 70 I have taken the plunge to roll a paladin and I am loving it. Also, I have raided all dungeons up to Naxxramas.

   The Burning Crusade is by far the best expansion, and expands the formula of World of Warcraft even more. Blizzard really fixed the problems with gear, the lack of endlevel dungeons, lack of raid content, boss design, and quest rewards. I will discuss these five things in detail.

   ~ GEAR ~
   Pre-BC: The difference between raiders and casual players was huge. Players who werent decked in epic gear didnt stand a chance against other players who did. Even players in Tier 1 (easiest epic set to get at the time) could kill players in blues without even trying.
   BC: The difference between raid gear and dungeon gear isnt very big any longer. I replaced my entire Tier 2 set and my epic weapons from raiding by the time I hit around level 66ish. After having over 20 days /played at 70, I have to say I am having a lot more to do at 70. Very good trinkets and weapons are easily obtainable by dungeon runs, and endgame content is fairly easy (with the exception of Serpentshrine Cavern, The Eye, and Black Temple). However, it is now fair competition between epic’d players and blue’d players. Gladiator PVP gear is amazingly powerful and the weapons are on-par with most of the weapons from Karazhan and Serpentshrine. If you have a team of skilled players, it wont be long to obtain these crazy Gladiator sets.

   ~ DUNGEONS ~
   Pre-BC: After getting your attunements done, you had 2 options in terms of dungeons: do UBRS, scholomance, or stratholme for sub-par gear, or spend 4 hours a night raiding MC, BWL, AQ40, Naxx, ZG, and AQ20 for epic gear that is nearly 2x as powerful as non-epic gear. The dungeons were boring and got old quickly.
   BC: As soon as you enter the outlands, you are greeted by 4 dungeon hubs of ~4 dungeons of different levels. The gear from these dungeons will most definitely replace your level 60 gear. Every level you gain you will be able to do another dungeon to get shiny new gear. And as soon as you hit 70, over 5 dungeons open up for you (all hosting INCREDIBLY powerful gear). There are plenty of quests for these dungeons, and they are all very interesting and look different from one another. They are all very straight forward and dont really get old.

   ~ RAID CONTENT ~
   Pre-BC: Most people finished with content very quickly and ended up waiting for a new dungeon to come out. Yes, I was there when Blackwing Lair came out and it was BUGGY as hell and no one got ANYWHERE. Yes, I endured through the horribly designed pre-C’Thun trash in AQ40, and yes I was there when the C’Thun encounter was terribly buggy and no one could do anything in phase 2. Then Naxxramas came out and raiders rejoiced because it was the best dungeon made and I couldnt agree more.
   BC: The new dungeons and bosses (which I will get into later) are amazing to say. The environments and atmosphere of each raid dungeon is different and they all have a certain feel to them. A Karazhan run feels like an adventure through an old abandoned run-down castle full of monsters and the undead. Gruuls lair feels like an epic journey through the cave of an incredibly powerful monster. Magtheridon’s Lair (whom you are teased by in Blood Furnace) feels like a prison holding an ancient, wise, and destructive monster…and it is! These dungeons are all these things, they are alive, they are vibrant, and they are FUN.

   ~ BOSS DESIGN ~
   Pre-BC: Ragnaros was the introduction of the horrible resistance checks in WoW. I can think of around 8-10 encounters that were resist checks and stupid gear checks (Vael/huhuran and twin emps/patchwerk, respectively) that prevented progression in the 4 40 mans. With the exception of Naxxramas and Blackwing Lair, all these dungeons were filled with trash mobs and you spent more time clearing trash than doing bosses. The bosses just were NOT fun.
   BC: The boss encounters in the Burning Crusade are a HUGE improvement over their predecessors. New, different encounters such as netherspite and shade of aran, and just plain fun ones like the chess event are just a few to name. They are all very fun, and are definitely worth wiping on, the pleasure and burst of excitement when you down these challenging bosses after nights of wiping are awesome. Also, with the 10/25 man caps, it is much easier to start/join a raiding guild that gets somewhere. The content isnt as crazy as Naxxramas was at 60, but they still require the same level of organization, skill, and teamwork.

   ~ QUEST DESIGN ~
   Pre-BC: Not much to say besides that the quests in Azeroth are stupid, annoying, and the rewards are HORRIBLE and USELESS. They are all very similar and they are very repetitive.
   BC: All the quests are…

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3. 18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

   
   Don’t believe the ravings of the perpetually grumpy, January 17, 2007

   By 

   Robert Rowland (Claremont, CA United States) –
   
     

   Fun: 

   This review is from: World Of Warcraft Expansion: Burning Crusade (DVD-ROM)

   For those of you who are wondering if you should buy the BC expansion and how it is faring on the live servers, let me put your mind at ease. The servers are up, the game is wonderful, and the new content puts the original content of WoW to shame. This is an expansion that Blizzard should stand up and be proud of!

   Contrary to other players experiences, I played the expansion for about 10 hours of the first day of its official live release (not the beta), and it is not buggy. The lag in the Outland can be a bit much at times, but then again when every level 60 on your server is in one zone trying to do quests, what do you expect? The mobs are constantly respawning at a rate so fast that once you kill the mob a respwan happens almost instantly (due to the frequency of kills in the zone). I have seen only one “evade” mob bugging out, and been disconnected twice in 10 hours, each time for less than a minute. With the score and breadth of the expansion, these are small problems that will not hamper your gameplay in the least (unless you are a Mr. Grumpy-Pants).

   The bottom line: buy the expansion if you play Warcraft. You won’t regret it.

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