(Image credit: Blizzard)
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade arrived almost three weeks ago, and since then it has been difficult to talk about any other game. Guild members who had not logged in for months are suddenly back in Azeroth every evening. Friends who claimed they had quit WoW for good bought the box after all. Anyone who installed the expansion on its first day found what looked like half the server standing on the same patch of ground near the Dark Portal.
That was inconvenient at times, but mostly impressive. Blizzard has not simply attached a few new quests to the game. The expansion gives every level 60 player the feeling of facing a complete new world in which hardly anyone knows the shortest routes, best rewards or most dangerous places.
The first hours in Hellfire Peninsula are chaotic. Players run everywhere, quest creatures disappear as soon as they appear and, on a PvP server, it does not take long before Horde and Alliance start attacking each other between the demons. Even so, the launch went better than many feared. There was lag and some realms had queues, but the predicted disaster in which nobody could play for days never arrived.
Once through the portal, it is immediately clear that Outland is not an ordinary new zone. The sky appears to be burning, pieces of land float above an endless void and a gigantic Fel Reaver walks around in the background. It is already responsible for a substantial percentage of all panicked messages in our guild chat. You often hear its mechanical scream only when it is too late.
The best part is that experienced players have to be careful again. In Azeroth, many level 60 characters could walk through ordinary enemies without thinking. In Hellfire Peninsula, one wrong step can once again end with a long walk from the graveyard.
The greatest shock sometimes comes not from a demon, but from a quest reward. Players who spent months in Molten Core, Blackwing Lair or Zul'Gurub are being offered green and blue items in Outland that come uncomfortably close to their old raid equipment. Sometimes they are simply better.
The first time, that almost feels insulting. A sword that required an entire guild to practise for dozens of evenings is suddenly compared with something a farmer produces after six errands. In practice, however, it works better than expected. Everyone can begin the expansion without first completing all the old raids. The best-equipped players still have an early advantage, but nobody has to spend months catching up before the new adventure can begin.
Blizzard has done something clever here: veterans receive new goals, while ordinary level 60 players do not have to follow as spectators.
Anyone who did not immediately enter the Dark Portal has probably tried one of the two new races. Blood Elves in particular are everywhere. Eversong Woods is full of pale mages, paladins and hunters with increasingly similar names. Their popularity is understandable: the starting zone is beautiful, the music is excellent and Silvermoon City looks richer and more refined than almost every existing capital.
The Draenei are stranger and perhaps more interesting because of it. Their ship has crashed on Azuremyst Isle, where their adventure begins among wreckage, crystals and unfamiliar technology. The story feels more extensive than that of many original races, and the quests lead into each other more naturally.
More important for the game is that the Horde can now create paladins and the Alliance can create shamans. That still takes some getting used to. A Blood Elf paladin in Orgrimmar looks almost wrong the first time, but it means both factions can finally build their guilds around the same important classes.
Hellfire Peninsula is only the beginning. Zangarmarsh is blue, wet and filled with enormous mushrooms. Terokkar Forest lies beneath a strange dark sky and eventually leads to Shattrath, where Horde and Alliance walk alongside each other without being able to attack. Beyond that waits Nagrand, which already appears to be the zone everyone wants to take screenshots of.
The zones are arranged more compactly than many parts of Azeroth. Quest givers are more often grouped together, assignments send you across the map without reason less frequently and dungeon entrances are placed in recognisable groups. It makes the expansion feel as though you are constantly finding something new, even when you can only play for an hour.
The dungeons are among Blizzard's best work so far. Hellfire Ramparts is short enough for an evening when not everyone can stay for long, but it still offers clear encounters and several worthwhile rewards. The Blood Furnace is darker and more dangerous, while the instances in Zangarmarsh already have a completely different atmosphere. It is refreshing that entering a dungeon no longer automatically means surrendering the entire evening.
The new level 70 limit is naturally the main objective for many players. The first player reached it roughly 28 hours after launch with help from a large group of friends. The rest of us are moving a little more slowly, although it sometimes seems that nobody sleeps anymore.
Watching the experience bar move is surprisingly enjoyable after it had remained still at level 60 for so long. Every new ability starts another round of comparisons, and every guild is discussing talent builds that may have changed again a week later. Nobody knows exactly what the best raid or Arena setup will be, and that uncertainty is exactly what makes these first weeks so enjoyable.
At level 70, Heroic dungeons, ten and twenty-five player raids, Arenas and, of course, flying mounts are waiting. Flying is the feature that captures the imagination most. From the ground you constantly see islands, ledges and buildings that you know will later be reachable from the air. Training is expensive, but almost everyone has already started saving.
The Burning Crusade does not turn World of Warcraft into a completely different game. You still collect quests, kill groups of monsters, search for better equipment and attempt to get five people online at the same time. Anyone who had grown tired of WoW will probably not change their mind because of this expansion.
For everyone who still enjoys spending time in Azeroth, however, this is exactly the expansion we hoped for. It brings new zones, races, dungeons, professions, spells and dozens of small improvements. Jewelcrafting has already created a lively trade in gems, while the new socketed items give players yet another reason to spend hours discussing their equipment.
Most importantly, the world feels unknown again. A few weeks ago, almost every experienced player knew where to go and which rewards were worth collecting. Now everyone is asking for directions again, half the group gets lost and a gigantic metal monster can suddenly step out of the mist.
Blizzard sold almost 2.4 million copies of the expansion during its first 24 hours. After a few evenings in Outland, it is easy to understand why. The Burning Crusade is not merely more World of Warcraft; it recreates the feeling of the game's first months, when something nobody in the guild had seen before could still be waiting behind every hill.
For now, there is only one serious problem standing between us and level 70: the alarm clock will still ring tomorrow morning.
