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World of Warcraft - The Burning Crusade Review
It would be hard to argue that World of Warcraft hasn't been a huge success. Not only has it been a financial success in the MMO market, but it has introduced many new people to Massive gaming that might not have otherwise given it a shot. With their first expansion, The Burning Crusade, Blizzard has made huge advances in many areas of the game. Long-standing complaints have been addressed, and the structure of the popular title has been reinforced. The casual players have gotten a large injection of content that is both accessible and enjoyable to someone who doesn't have huge amounts of time to play. At the same time, hardcore players who thirst for new challenges on a daily basis have quite a bit of work ahead of them. This is not to say that The Burning Crusade (BC) doesn't have its pitfalls, but overall I get the feeling that this is closer to what Blizzard's World of Warcraft dream was meant to be. Read on for my opinions of this new round of addiction.
The first major improvement in the game comes with the extension of the level grind. There is a vast difference in the enjoyment of leveling a character from levels 1-60 and from 60-70. While the amount of experience is relatively comparable, the mechanisms in place make it a completely different animal. With the original game, leveling was thought of as one of the main aspects of the game and designed to take a long time to do with very little continuity or help to speed you along. Instances were designed to be for gear rewards and something you did rarely in between your bouts of leveling. With The Burning Crusade, the quests were designed to make you feel like you were accomplishing smaller tasks within a grand scheme, and they actually helped to develop the plot and a feeling that you were a part of the game rather than just trying to "beat" the game to get a level.
Throughout the questing and overall leveling process, instances in the Burning Crusade were also designed to be a much more integral part of the game for both leveling and gear. The group experience bonus allows a player to still make good progress towards the next level while playing through group content with friends and finding new challenges and boss fights along the way. The quests for every zone eventually start to poke and prod you towards the next level appropriate instance to help players make this decision and help round out the leveling experience. To make the process of instancing even better, Blizzard has grouped the instances in each zone together as "wings" of increasing difficulty within a larger structure that has an overall theme. This allows players to tackle the content in smaller chunks without having to commit large blocks of time just to do an instance. At the end of each group of instances the content culminates in a larger group encounter for raids to tackle once their players have completed a key quest for that particular instance.
While instances may have gotten a large push in the right direction, there are still a couple of major problems that continue to crop up, preventing players from really enjoying the content that is right in front of them. The largest of these problems are instance-breaking bugs. There have been quite a few of them since launch, and while bugs are to be expected, these are taking a long time to fix. Meanwhile the customer service reps in game are doing very little to help the players deal with the bugs beyond telling them it is a known problem and sorry about your luck. Now, I realize that some people are going to try and exploit GM assistance, but there comes a time when you just need to give your customer the benefit of the doubt and help them through any problems that crop up. The other major problem attached to instances comes before you even make it to the instance. If you aren't part of a large guild with resources always at hand, it means you are going to have to try your luck with a pickup group. While the "Looking for Group" interface was a neat addition, I think Blizzard either did too much or too little depending on what they were going for. With a simple global chat channel it was very easy for players just to type what they were looking to do and for others to answer, a quick and easy solution. In fact, most servers have seen a grass roots channel emerge to move back to this functionality. With the introduction of a user interface and automation to the process, they removed the "easy" solution but didn't go far enough with the complex solution. Ultimately, the "best" answer to this problem would be to bring back the chat channel but make the user interface "grab" names and classes from that chat channel into a larger pool of people to draw from, allowing users to use both methods of communication depending on their preference.
One of the main points of skepticism before the release of The Burning Crusade was the number of reputation "grinds" that would be required in order to experience new content. While much of the new content is hidden behind reputation requirements, the new system allows players to gain reputation at an amazingly fast rate making this requirement almost a non-issue. In addition to new content for these new factions the reputation system also unlocks a vast amount of new pearls for the crafting system. This allows different reputation choices to determine which recipes you are able to craft so that each crafter has the ability to obtain unique recipes instead of being a cookie cutter crafter like it was before the expansion.
Despite the fact that the casual consumer has definitely been given quite a bit of content to work their way through, the hardcore player has certainly not been left in the lurch. Raid content is available in spades. The addition of a 'heroic mode' for dungeons allows players to go back and play through previous instances at a higher difficulty level (and for better rewards). This, again, requires that they have put in the time to attain a high enough reputation level with the controlling faction. With each set of instances, there is also a difficult 25-man raid (now that Blizzard has decided to limit their "large" raids to 25 players instead of 40) encounter designed to provide an additional challenge. Beyond these short raids there is also new 10-man content (Karazhan) that allows players to work through a larger dungeon and attain a new armor "set" in addition to the random drops that still occur. Once players have made their way through this 10-man content they can start working towards some of the even larger 25-man content with huge sprawling dungeons promised, eventually culminating in the battle through Mount Hyjal. However, in order to get to this final realization players must wade through a lot of content. In an effort to help players in this goal one player even put together a flow chart of what it is going to take to realize this goal.
The largest problem with the current raid content is that while it requires large amounts of work to get to and complete (as it should), the rewards for actually completing that raid content have all but eviscerated the desire to do the work. Having moved from a "hardcore" raiding style of play to a much more casual approach I was quite pleased at how much I was able to do on a daily basis with my limited time. However, looking back at my previous play style and the rewards that I would be shooting for I realized that there was very little reason for me to aim for those "end game" rewards anymore. The time spent versus rewards earned seems a little imbalanced. I'm sure that a large part of this decision was to try and cater to the larger "casual" player base and stop the hemorrhage of players they were losing to other games. Just the same, if you are going to create content that caters to your hardcore players you should probably create rewards that justify the work they are about to put into it.
While much of the game play and content has been improved greatly the class balance issue is still one that continues to haunt Blizzard. For example, if you are a Rogue and you really want to experience some of the heroic content and smaller raid encounters, you are in for a difficult time finding a group. The same goes for priests if you are really into the competitive player versus player aspect of the game. I am willing to give Blizzard the benefit of the doubt on this one since they are probably still evaluating how the new talents and new gear will effect the overall class balance, but changes are definitely needed.
In addition to all of the game play changes, each faction also has a new race, a new homeland, and tons of new starting quests to work through. While information on the new horde race, the Blood-Elf, has been available for quite some time, the new alliance race, the Draenei, has been somewhat of a mystery almost until the release of the beta. Unfortunately, this also shows in the quality of both the quests and the overall feel for each of these races. The homeland and starting quests for the Blood-Elves have a much larger degree of continuity and they lend a feeling of a long time in development while the Draenei feel like a last minute cobble when they couldn't think of anything else. This obviously doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things once you make it to Outland and the new content, but it can have a definite effect on someone just starting the game.
Overall, it seems that Blizzard is definitely listening to their player base, they just need to do a better job of communicating that fact. I realize that it is hard to release information about something if it later gets taken away or changed, but let your GM staff work for you, give the player the benefit of the doubt more often, and admit when something is wrong so that players can avoid the disappointment while it is being fixed.
Despite any pitfalls, The Burning Crusade is an excellent addition to the Warcraft Universe. Blizzard has done an excellent job of catering to many of the different types of players within the game, providing a wide array of enjoyable content. If you are new to the MMO scene or even if you gave up hope before The Burning Crusade hit the streets, now is a great time to get into the game and give it a shot.
- Title: World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade
- Developer/Publisher: Blizzard / Vivendi
- System: PC / Mac
- Genre: Massively Multiplayer Online Game
- Score: 4/5 - This game is a wonderful addition to the original World of Warcraft universe and helps to alleviate many of the "problems" that players have been complaining about for a long time. If you are burnt out on the original game, now is a good time to give it another look.
The first major improvement in the game comes with the extension of the level grind. There is a vast difference in the enjoyment of leveling a character from levels 1-60 and from 60-70. While the amount of experience is relatively comparable, the mechanisms in place make it a completely different animal. With the original game, leveling was thought of as one of the main aspects of the game and designed to take a long time to do with very little continuity or help to speed you along. Instances were designed to be for gear rewards and something you did rarely in between your bouts of leveling. With The Burning Crusade, the quests were designed to make you feel like you were accomplishing smaller tasks within a grand scheme, and they actually helped to develop the plot and a feeling that you were a part of the game rather than just trying to "beat" the game to get a level.
Throughout the questing and overall leveling process, instances in the Burning Crusade were also designed to be a much more integral part of the game for both leveling and gear. The group experience bonus allows a player to still make good progress towards the next level while playing through group content with friends and finding new challenges and boss fights along the way. The quests for every zone eventually start to poke and prod you towards the next level appropriate instance to help players make this decision and help round out the leveling experience. To make the process of instancing even better, Blizzard has grouped the instances in each zone together as "wings" of increasing difficulty within a larger structure that has an overall theme. This allows players to tackle the content in smaller chunks without having to commit large blocks of time just to do an instance. At the end of each group of instances the content culminates in a larger group encounter for raids to tackle once their players have completed a key quest for that particular instance.
While instances may have gotten a large push in the right direction, there are still a couple of major problems that continue to crop up, preventing players from really enjoying the content that is right in front of them. The largest of these problems are instance-breaking bugs. There have been quite a few of them since launch, and while bugs are to be expected, these are taking a long time to fix. Meanwhile the customer service reps in game are doing very little to help the players deal with the bugs beyond telling them it is a known problem and sorry about your luck. Now, I realize that some people are going to try and exploit GM assistance, but there comes a time when you just need to give your customer the benefit of the doubt and help them through any problems that crop up. The other major problem attached to instances comes before you even make it to the instance. If you aren't part of a large guild with resources always at hand, it means you are going to have to try your luck with a pickup group. While the "Looking for Group" interface was a neat addition, I think Blizzard either did too much or too little depending on what they were going for. With a simple global chat channel it was very easy for players just to type what they were looking to do and for others to answer, a quick and easy solution. In fact, most servers have seen a grass roots channel emerge to move back to this functionality. With the introduction of a user interface and automation to the process, they removed the "easy" solution but didn't go far enough with the complex solution. Ultimately, the "best" answer to this problem would be to bring back the chat channel but make the user interface "grab" names and classes from that chat channel into a larger pool of people to draw from, allowing users to use both methods of communication depending on their preference.
One of the main points of skepticism before the release of The Burning Crusade was the number of reputation "grinds" that would be required in order to experience new content. While much of the new content is hidden behind reputation requirements, the new system allows players to gain reputation at an amazingly fast rate making this requirement almost a non-issue. In addition to new content for these new factions the reputation system also unlocks a vast amount of new pearls for the crafting system. This allows different reputation choices to determine which recipes you are able to craft so that each crafter has the ability to obtain unique recipes instead of being a cookie cutter crafter like it was before the expansion.
Despite the fact that the casual consumer has definitely been given quite a bit of content to work their way through, the hardcore player has certainly not been left in the lurch. Raid content is available in spades. The addition of a 'heroic mode' for dungeons allows players to go back and play through previous instances at a higher difficulty level (and for better rewards). This, again, requires that they have put in the time to attain a high enough reputation level with the controlling faction. With each set of instances, there is also a difficult 25-man raid (now that Blizzard has decided to limit their "large" raids to 25 players instead of 40) encounter designed to provide an additional challenge. Beyond these short raids there is also new 10-man content (Karazhan) that allows players to work through a larger dungeon and attain a new armor "set" in addition to the random drops that still occur. Once players have made their way through this 10-man content they can start working towards some of the even larger 25-man content with huge sprawling dungeons promised, eventually culminating in the battle through Mount Hyjal. However, in order to get to this final realization players must wade through a lot of content. In an effort to help players in this goal one player even put together a flow chart of what it is going to take to realize this goal.
The largest problem with the current raid content is that while it requires large amounts of work to get to and complete (as it should), the rewards for actually completing that raid content have all but eviscerated the desire to do the work. Having moved from a "hardcore" raiding style of play to a much more casual approach I was quite pleased at how much I was able to do on a daily basis with my limited time. However, looking back at my previous play style and the rewards that I would be shooting for I realized that there was very little reason for me to aim for those "end game" rewards anymore. The time spent versus rewards earned seems a little imbalanced. I'm sure that a large part of this decision was to try and cater to the larger "casual" player base and stop the hemorrhage of players they were losing to other games. Just the same, if you are going to create content that caters to your hardcore players you should probably create rewards that justify the work they are about to put into it.
While much of the game play and content has been improved greatly the class balance issue is still one that continues to haunt Blizzard. For example, if you are a Rogue and you really want to experience some of the heroic content and smaller raid encounters, you are in for a difficult time finding a group. The same goes for priests if you are really into the competitive player versus player aspect of the game. I am willing to give Blizzard the benefit of the doubt on this one since they are probably still evaluating how the new talents and new gear will effect the overall class balance, but changes are definitely needed.
In addition to all of the game play changes, each faction also has a new race, a new homeland, and tons of new starting quests to work through. While information on the new horde race, the Blood-Elf, has been available for quite some time, the new alliance race, the Draenei, has been somewhat of a mystery almost until the release of the beta. Unfortunately, this also shows in the quality of both the quests and the overall feel for each of these races. The homeland and starting quests for the Blood-Elves have a much larger degree of continuity and they lend a feeling of a long time in development while the Draenei feel like a last minute cobble when they couldn't think of anything else. This obviously doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things once you make it to Outland and the new content, but it can have a definite effect on someone just starting the game.
Overall, it seems that Blizzard is definitely listening to their player base, they just need to do a better job of communicating that fact. I realize that it is hard to release information about something if it later gets taken away or changed, but let your GM staff work for you, give the player the benefit of the doubt more often, and admit when something is wrong so that players can avoid the disappointment while it is being fixed.
Despite any pitfalls, The Burning Crusade is an excellent addition to the Warcraft Universe. Blizzard has done an excellent job of catering to many of the different types of players within the game, providing a wide array of enjoyable content. If you are new to the MMO scene or even if you gave up hope before The Burning Crusade hit the streets, now is a great time to get into the game and give it a shot.
I concur with almost everything in this review.
I'll note one additional data point: When you do some of the initial quests, you'll be amazed at the quality of the quest rewards for relatively simple quests. I believe this was an intentional design to bring the "casual" player up to raid quality gear, effectively levelling the playing field. Casuals do not start at much of a disadvantage when they're having T2-quality gear heaped upon them (previously only available in instances such as BWL, where few casual players were able to attend).
The game does slow down after you hit 70, but more options open. Most likely, you'll be grinding to get a fast mount, but you'll almost certainly have 1000g for the slow flying mount. You'll want a guild, but one is not necessary to participate in most of the content. However, guildless, it's unlikely you'll progress into the "advanced" content for quite a while. It's difficult to complete the 10-man Karazhan key in PUGs, and even if you do, there are few 10-man PUGs. That sounds kind of funny, but Karazhan is NOT simply a level 70 UBRS. It's more like a 10-man Naxxramus.
If you used to play WoW but quit, perhaps because you ran out of non-40-man-raid things to do, you might want to restart your account and get the expansion. It's rather fun.
My account was cancelled for a full year, but I picked it back up in January, got the expansion, and have enjoyed it so far. I reached 70 on my main a few nights ago, and spent last night just flying around on my (flying, obviously) mount.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
And "instance" is a dungeon, populated with monsters and quest goals, generated specifically for your party. No one else is there. If some other group tries to enter the same dungeon, they get a difference "instance". It's a good way of getting away from the farmers and channel chatter.
Instances also have bosses with mad l3wt, which is always fun.
Just some intro caveats: I'm a casual player. I think I've been in a raid-group of more than 5 twice. I am friends with several people who are serious raiders, but I'm not one.
Initially when you first start the new content, the items you receive feel unbelievably good. They are meant to bring you up to just barely under the power level of the folks who have spent the past years raiding. And because of this, the new stuff felt really munchkin initially. Fun, but munchkin. Epic items from pre-BC were replaced with green(normal) items found in BC. The quests are good - a lot of the little annoying bits have been toned down (fewer pointless long runs, flagging quests that really require multiple people as requiring 2 or 3 people as appropriate). There is a lot of nice flavor here.
One thing the reviewer missed is that a lot of BC is really beautiful. Each zone is very distinctive. And there have been several times when I just paused to admire the beauty. With the addition of flying mounts, there are some really gorgeous views that can be found. Several of the instances are visually stunning as well. This is a pretty game.
There are some class balance issues -- but I think at least part of the issues are that the classes changed a bit and people have not adapted their thinking. For example, it used to be hard to try to be a raiding druid in the tank role -- there was effectively one set of gear that all tank-druids went for. BC has added a large variety -- which means the class is a lot more viable in a role than it used to be. Is this unbalancing? No. It is different and changes some of the feel of the game.
I'm a casual player as well and curious as to what you've been smoking.
My only character in the game was a level 60. I haven't done any of the new races (I heard they're well designed and beautiful). From level 60-70, I've probably gone on 20 small-man dungeon runs (5 players) and done about 400-500 quests. I've levelled up my leatherworking and saved money for my epic flying mount (Druids get the regular one for free). Even when I play totally solo, the new content has kept me enthralled.
Will you enjoy the game more if you level to 60 and find a few friends to play with. Yes. Is that hard? No. If you're still struggling to get to 60 (again, not hard) you're going to see generic content -- nothing from 20-60 has changed. For every other casual player who's at 60, the expansion has been a blessing with loads of new content and lots of upgrades.
An instance in WoW is a self-contained "copy" of a dungeon for your group. You basically get your group mates together, walk through the dungeon's portal entrance, and a "copy" of the dungeon is created for your group to progress through. In the days of EverQuest (before the LDoN expansion), every dungeon was shared across the server, so if one dungeon was full, you basically had to wait until people left or you went to another dungeon. It takes a little bit of the "community" out of the game, but the added convenience is well worth it.
I think what the author meant by "wade through a lot of content" is that there is a lot of pre-requisite content that must be completed before moving on to the later, (arguably) more rewarding content. The statement is partly true (but exaggerated). If you look at the chart supplied showing the requirements, it does look like a whole lot of stuff to do. However, what people fail to mention is that just by playing the game, completing quests, and going through dungeons, you end up completing the vast majority of the requirements without a whole lot of extra effort.
For instance, every Heroic mode dungeon (the harder version of the dungeon) requires every group mate to have the Heroic mode key. You buy the Heroic mode key off a quartermaster for that dungeon's reputation, which requires you to be Revered standing. The first dungeon, Hellfire Citadel, is tied to the reputation "Honor Hold" (for Alliance) and "Thrallmar" (for Horde). By the time you do all the quests available, and run through the dungeon wings a few times on normal mode, you're already nearly up to the required reputation. There is very little extra grinding effort required to get to new content, unless you skip the natural progression of doing quests and dungeons for leveling.
I'm having a lot of fun with the expansion. So far my only complaint has been the issues the Warrior class has been having with fulfilling its job as a tank, but that will be fixed in time.
You're joking, right? The BC expansion seems tailor-made for casuals to enjoy. The level progression is set at a good pace for casual gaming, and there are many instances that can be played with casual, 5-man groups. Reputation gain is also a lot faster, so people who don't play 8 hours a day don't feel as though all the good rep rewards are out of their reach.
I'm not a hardcore raider, but I wouldn't quite call myself a casual player since I average about 4 hours of gaming a night. I can clearly see how Blizzard has balanced the new content between casual and hardcore playing styles. Blizzard has obviously learned some lessons here.
And there's a fact that a lot of people miss: the new level cap and the power escalation that these new levels provide give casuals more of a chance to try the old "end game" content that they previously could not see because of their lack of commitment to gaining the powerful weapons and armor needed to see them. Sure the rewards won't be great, but, in my experience, casuals are more geared toward "having fun" than "getting the best equipment.
And that leads me to a final opinion about the article submitter's gripe about the lower quality of hardcore gear. While games like WoW are certainly "item acquisition" games, if your only goal is getting the next best thing, then I think you're missing out on a lot of enjoyment that WoW has to offer. Ten or twenty years from now, when my friends and I think back about out time spent playing together on WoW, our recollections will not be "remember that mace I got with the +50 Str?" but, rather "Remember when we finally beat that boss you spawned clones of us while we were fighting?"
I sincerely hope that a lot of people with the mindset of "better gear" being the be-all-end-all of the game came to their senses with the wakeup call Blizzard put into the BC where the tier 2 armor sets they spend months trying to obtain were made almost immediately obsolete by the first new items available in the BC.
To sum up my feelings on the Burning Crusade expasion: "gg blizzard"
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
As the other replier pointed out, training is free. You get flight form and the ability to ride any regular flying mount when you train at 68. Outside this, there's another great benefit: Druid flight form is instant cast. It's also immune to polymorph and breaks certain snares. That means, at any given time (even falling hundreds of feet) a Druid can shift and fly away. It's an invaluable addition to their repertoire.
WOW acutally has several types of "instances", distinguished by portal color. First, the two main continents (Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms) actually are instances that are separate from each other (the ships and zeppelins are the "portals"). These work the same way "travel" instances do (white portals)...programming-wise they are still instances, but there is no limit to the number of players in it, and all players are placed in the same instance. Outland is the same way, and the Blood Elf/Draenei starting areas also are (to get to the blood elf area you walk through a white portal or teleport). This means that the Blood Elf/Draenei starting areas, while they are shown on the main world map, are not technically part of the geography of EK or Kalimdor...if you were to find a way to exploit the terrain to get around the portal to the blood elf area you'd probably just end up at a beach with nothing there (and possibly terrain glitches since that area hasn't been finished since you're not supposed to go there). Blue instance portals are normal 5-man instances (some of these have a limit of 10 players so you can technically enter with a raid but you're not really supposed to). In these, a separate instance is created for every party that enters. Raid portals are green and are either 10, 20, 25, or 40-man, separate instance is created for each party...only difference with these is that they reset on a regular weekly schedule rather than when you clear it or reset it manually, you can't reset these manually. This is because these are long and hard and take a lot of work to find a group for...so you don't necessarily have to complete it all at once. Finally there are purple portals (only in Outland so far)...these are the same as regular (blue), only difference is it indicates that a heroic mode exists for that instance.
You absolutely can play it on Linux by several different methods. 2 prefectly functioning commercial options are using Cedega: www.transgaming.com, and even crossover office supports WoW now. Alternatively, you can use Wine to play. Play on Linux is nearly indistinguishable from windows at this point. This is due to a couple of reasons: 1. WoW can use OpenGL to render in addition to DirectX, and 2. The modification/addon system is through a WoW specific compiler of the 'LUA' scripting language -- which is OS indepedent. Best of luck! Mich The Drizzard
I don't know what kind of crack you're smoking, but I play a mage too. Most of my new gear is green, with a few blues, and one socketed item. I'm only 65, with 42 points in frost and 14 in fire (it's going to be 0/19/42). I'm out DPSing (70) warlocks, BM hunters, shadow priests, and sometimes rogues. Now, given the original position of the mage in beta, and before the nerfs, I've fallen a couple ranks on the DPS charts -- mages used to out-DPS EVERYONE, with rogues only being able to win on fights that went for more than 10 minutes or so. I do run out of mana pretty quickly, but that's because of how I've min-maxed my gear (+dmg, +crit, stam, int, then spi). Just about every fight I pull out my extra 200 DPS pet, and every 90 seconds I've got 15 seconds of pure 2500 frostbolt crit magic thanks to trinkets. Warlocks don't touch me. Of course warlocks are going to have more HP than you, this is by design. But that doesn't mean they've got more pvp viability -- try taking a warlock against a melee class. Mages, on the other hand, completely wreck warriors, paladins, and rogues, and have good success against shamans. And AoE? How long can a warlock really do RoF? Mages can blizzard till the cows come home, and then take the rest of them out with CoC and AE. L2P.
I mod down pyramid schemes in sigs.