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Video Games : World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Expansion Pack (Mac/PC CD)
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Rating: 
- So is the expansion any good?
So, is the expansion any good? Well, I'll give you my answer at the end, but first I'll give you some of the things you might want to know to see if you join the game to find out for yourself.
TBC (The Burning Crusade) is the expansion to the orginal game hit of WoW (World of Warcraft), which has stood up to its accronym and has been "wowing" people since its launch in 2004 with it's huge world of expansive content, that has made it one of the most addictive games played to date by myself and nearly all 7 million others that have put the tiny silver disc into their PC drive tray.
TBC takes the work of WoW and as you expect "expands" on it. Obviously they had to make new additions to perk peoples interest, and 2 of those changes are two new races. These races are the Draenei (Alliance side) and the Blood Elves (Horde Side), and while I could go into more detail on who and what they are, its not that important to the average player other than to note that there is more option on what you can play.
This leads on to the fact that in addition to the two new races you will now be able to play a Paladin if you are Horde, and Shaman if you are Alliance, where as before these two classes were not available to both sides. This has been met with mixed responses. Some have said they hate it due to it not maybe keeping to the world of warcraft storyline, and others have liked the idea due to the fact it adds some game balance and more options for the dungeon designers. Personally I think the horde don't like it because the shaman was very good for them in PvP (player vs player), but time will tell how it shapes up overall as an addition. Personally, more choice is a good thing as far as I'm concerned.
The new areas that have been added with TBC are great from what I have seen so far, which is about 5 areas, 3 cities, and 6 different instances/dungeons as I got to level 66 at time of writing this. I should note that the new starting cities/areas for the two new races are really beautiful, and many of my friends have set them as their hearth stone homes (places they can teleport back to), so that they can enjoy walking around them some more. You will get to see lots of variety in the areas, as you saw in the orginal wow game, with desert type areas, swamps, lush forest, and of course your dark and demented type ones. The only slight odd thing I've noticed so far is that the random weather effects of rain/snow/sandstorm that were added to the orginal seem oddly lacking from the expansion so far. There is a fairly constant drizzle (light rain) in the swamp, but while the areas and their lighting and other overall content is really eye pleasing I did find this an odd oversight that may well soon be amended by Blizzard. I hope so at any rate.
The new instances that I have been to so far are far shorter in time to complete than you had in wow orginal and the bosses loot tables (items they can drop) are certainly not as expansive as they were in orginal. This maybe because they are early instances in the case of the loot tables, but the shorter length of course also lend itself to the theory that you don't need to spend days/weeks farming them just to get one item you are set on getting for your character, which is a good thing really.
The Dungeons themselves start off pretty easy to be honest, and any half decent group with master them first or second time through. This does however change a little in some of the mid 60 level instances. I had a friend that went with a PUG (Pickup Group/random players) that died on the trash packs (creature groups before dungeon bosses) in the Mana Tombs instance/dungeon before they got to the first boss, and I should note that many tier 2 (armour set of epic gear) teams found this place kicked their butts a fair bit before doing it. Certainly the tactics for some of the battles, even on trash needs to be worked at more than you may have seen in wow original, and leads me to think it won't be easy for many groups that enter instances at times.
This kind of leads on to the idea of raiding. Many that played wow orginal did dungeon raids of 40 players, but that will not be an option for TBC due to Blizzard scraping the idea of 40 man raids. WHile existing 40 player instances will remain, no new ones will be added, or have been in TBC. The current instances will be for 5, 10 or a max of 25 players. This has been done mainly to help the casual player have a bash at end game content that often was restricted to the hard core player that got a group of 40 people to raid places on a regular basis. This may kind of suck for many, as it will be hard on communities that were set of for 40 man raiding (myself included) and personally I believe be hard on the casual player, because in my personal opinion with the level of difficulty I expect blizzard will add to the 25 man instances 25 man PUG's will just get royally pwned as soon as they step through the instance portals. This remains to be tested however, and time will tell.
Other new content include. New proffession of "Jewel Crafting", which will also used in connection to the new items that have "Socketted Slots" that allow jewels to be added. These jewels can be used to customise items you gain from dungeons, or are crafted by the other proffessions in the game. This is a good thing to my eyes, and allows people to be quite flexible in how they make their gear work for them, and will make for large differences at end game where everyone was lookign a little similar in orginal game.
Flying mounts. You will at level 70 be able to buy normal and epic flying mounts. That about says it all, other than to say that unfortunately the flying mounts currently and maybe for all time will only be able to be used in outlands, but hey it will be fun none the less. I had a 70 warlock fly down and help some of his mates that we were busy killing in pvp, and it does come as a surprise, as you aren't used to having to look UP!
Player Vs Player. This has had a revamp, and till it goes live this week coming it will be hard to access if it really works. However, it looks like it could. The same current battle grounds are going to be there, but the honour system has been changed to allow both hardcore and casual players to get good rewards from it. Also they have included a new arena style battle ground for teams of 2vs2, 3vs3, or 5vs5 to compete in. WHen this goes fully live you will be able to compete in a ladder competition that lasts for a full 3 months with the winners at the end of that time getting some pretty cool rewards, including the rare armoured nether mount (epic flying mount).
In short, and in answer to the topic title. Yes, so far the expansion is good, and fun. Buy it and you'll still be just as addicticted to TBC as you were to the orginal.
Rating: - What more could you want?
This expansion is an essential for people that have played the World of Warcraft pre expansion game. Despite a series of small bugs (most have which have been amended) the game has opened up vastly and now allows for a much larger scale of both PvE and PvP action.
New items gained relitivly easily in the new area 'The Outland' can help new players get up to date on items, so there is no feeling that you will be constantly playing the 'catch-up' game, and some of the easily obtained items even replace those that some of the more seasoned players have.
The support offered by blizzard both by in game gm's and on their official forums also makes this game one of a kind.
The game is truely enjoyable, with magical lands and wonderful creatures, some so well animated you may even feel bad killing them.
Well worth the money, best expansion i have seen in a game to date
Rating: - Installed and loving it!
True to form, Amazon delivered the goods on time and on the day specified meaning that this was waiting for me when I got home from work. Very excited, I started the install. Things did not go too swimmingly and I got strange error messages. After fiddling with my PC for a while, I did manage to get it installed so I guess it was my PC and nothing to do with the software. To play, you must have an existing World of Warcraft account and upgrade it to a Burning Crusade enabled account. This is free and a very painless process and took me about 5 seconds to complete.
Everything had gone relatively well and so I decided to log on. My normal high populated server was offline (probably due to peak time) so I decided to create a new character on one of the new servers. I decided on a Blood Elf warlock and very quickly got into the swing of things - the new Blood Elf area is absolutely stunning to look at and Blizzard have definitely got it right with looks and layout.
After a couple of hours just levelling, I decided to go onto my normal character and look at the new high level area. I was not disappointed and the server had stabilised itself. The new high-level Outlands area is visually stunning (that word again!) and a player is very quickly back into the swing of things. It is a long time since I have had the feeling of danger that you get when entering a new zone and monsters are actually able to kill you, but I definitely got that feeling again whilst exploring Outland. All in all, I have enjoyed things immensely.
If you are an existing player, get this game. If you are new to the game, get it with a normal copy of World of Warcraft - just be prepared to wonder where all the hours have gone.
Rating: - TBC - Thank you Blizzard and Congratulations!
I started playing The Burning Crusade (TBC) the moment the portal opened last night. Had it on pre-order :-))
Let me just walk you through the first few minutes in Outland...
You come through the dark portal and are immediately witness to a battle for the portal itself. Your first quest is to go to the fronts lines, so you're sent on a griffon to Hellfire Keep. When you are handed your first quest you suddenly realise that all your gear, including any epics, are going to be made redundant very very quickly. For those of you without any epics, lets just say just your gonna wet your pants! A few easy quests later and you've got used to killing monsters your level again, you've got 3 new pieces of awesome new gear, and you're 50Gold better off than when you started!
TBC is: the end of gold farmers; allows people to solo or work in smaller parties and still attain good gear; HUGE!!! the monsters the landscape (get an epic mount!); really really good fun; fixes holes in some professions and adds to all of them.
So far everyone who's gone through that portal has loved every minute. It has become apparent to me that blizzard are getting everyone's gear upto the level it needs to be with these early, and easy, quests. I can only imagine what challenges await me over the road to level 70. TBC>Genius!
Rating:
- US/Euro-English Compatibility problem
I've pre-orderd "The Burning Crusade" has just came into my post today and I tried to install, but a message came out saying:
Unable to Install
This version of The Burning Crusade is only compatible with the European English version of World of Warcraft
I bought and installed a copy in Japan last October since I lived there but now I've moved to the UK and carried on playing. I've preorderd TBC on amazon.co.uk and came across this issue. Since WoW is not supported in Japan, I bought a copy at an imported game store, which I now know that it distributed the US version. So before buying this copy, please check which version of the former WoW first. If you have the US version like me, we're stuck at the moment. Seems to be a lot of people in the UK who has this problem by looking at the www.worldofwarcraft.com webforum so BEWARE.
- So is the expansion any good?So, is the expansion any good? Well, I'll give you my answer at the end, but first I'll give you some of the things you might want to know to see if you join the game to find out for yourself.
TBC (The Burning Crusade) is the expansion to the orginal game hit of WoW (World of Warcraft), which has stood up to its accronym and has been "wowing" people since its launch in 2004 with it's huge world of expansive content, that has made it one of the most addictive games played to date by myself and nearly all 7 million others that have put the tiny silver disc into their PC drive tray.
TBC takes the work of WoW and as you expect "expands" on it. Obviously they had to make new additions to perk peoples interest, and 2 of those changes are two new races. These races are the Draenei (Alliance side) and the Blood Elves (Horde Side), and while I could go into more detail on who and what they are, its not that important to the average player other than to note that there is more option on what you can play.
This leads on to the fact that in addition to the two new races you will now be able to play a Paladin if you are Horde, and Shaman if you are Alliance, where as before these two classes were not available to both sides. This has been met with mixed responses. Some have said they hate it due to it not maybe keeping to the world of warcraft storyline, and others have liked the idea due to the fact it adds some game balance and more options for the dungeon designers. Personally I think the horde don't like it because the shaman was very good for them in PvP (player vs player), but time will tell how it shapes up overall as an addition. Personally, more choice is a good thing as far as I'm concerned.
The new areas that have been added with TBC are great from what I have seen so far, which is about 5 areas, 3 cities, and 6 different instances/dungeons as I got to level 66 at time of writing this. I should note that the new starting cities/areas for the two new races are really beautiful, and many of my friends have set them as their hearth stone homes (places they can teleport back to), so that they can enjoy walking around them some more. You will get to see lots of variety in the areas, as you saw in the orginal wow game, with desert type areas, swamps, lush forest, and of course your dark and demented type ones. The only slight odd thing I've noticed so far is that the random weather effects of rain/snow/sandstorm that were added to the orginal seem oddly lacking from the expansion so far. There is a fairly constant drizzle (light rain) in the swamp, but while the areas and their lighting and other overall content is really eye pleasing I did find this an odd oversight that may well soon be amended by Blizzard. I hope so at any rate.
The new instances that I have been to so far are far shorter in time to complete than you had in wow orginal and the bosses loot tables (items they can drop) are certainly not as expansive as they were in orginal. This maybe because they are early instances in the case of the loot tables, but the shorter length of course also lend itself to the theory that you don't need to spend days/weeks farming them just to get one item you are set on getting for your character, which is a good thing really.
The Dungeons themselves start off pretty easy to be honest, and any half decent group with master them first or second time through. This does however change a little in some of the mid 60 level instances. I had a friend that went with a PUG (Pickup Group/random players) that died on the trash packs (creature groups before dungeon bosses) in the Mana Tombs instance/dungeon before they got to the first boss, and I should note that many tier 2 (armour set of epic gear) teams found this place kicked their butts a fair bit before doing it. Certainly the tactics for some of the battles, even on trash needs to be worked at more than you may have seen in wow original, and leads me to think it won't be easy for many groups that enter instances at times.
This kind of leads on to the idea of raiding. Many that played wow orginal did dungeon raids of 40 players, but that will not be an option for TBC due to Blizzard scraping the idea of 40 man raids. WHile existing 40 player instances will remain, no new ones will be added, or have been in TBC. The current instances will be for 5, 10 or a max of 25 players. This has been done mainly to help the casual player have a bash at end game content that often was restricted to the hard core player that got a group of 40 people to raid places on a regular basis. This may kind of suck for many, as it will be hard on communities that were set of for 40 man raiding (myself included) and personally I believe be hard on the casual player, because in my personal opinion with the level of difficulty I expect blizzard will add to the 25 man instances 25 man PUG's will just get royally pwned as soon as they step through the instance portals. This remains to be tested however, and time will tell.
Other new content include. New proffession of "Jewel Crafting", which will also used in connection to the new items that have "Socketted Slots" that allow jewels to be added. These jewels can be used to customise items you gain from dungeons, or are crafted by the other proffessions in the game. This is a good thing to my eyes, and allows people to be quite flexible in how they make their gear work for them, and will make for large differences at end game where everyone was lookign a little similar in orginal game.
Flying mounts. You will at level 70 be able to buy normal and epic flying mounts. That about says it all, other than to say that unfortunately the flying mounts currently and maybe for all time will only be able to be used in outlands, but hey it will be fun none the less. I had a 70 warlock fly down and help some of his mates that we were busy killing in pvp, and it does come as a surprise, as you aren't used to having to look UP!
Player Vs Player. This has had a revamp, and till it goes live this week coming it will be hard to access if it really works. However, it looks like it could. The same current battle grounds are going to be there, but the honour system has been changed to allow both hardcore and casual players to get good rewards from it. Also they have included a new arena style battle ground for teams of 2vs2, 3vs3, or 5vs5 to compete in. WHen this goes fully live you will be able to compete in a ladder competition that lasts for a full 3 months with the winners at the end of that time getting some pretty cool rewards, including the rare armoured nether mount (epic flying mount).
In short, and in answer to the topic title. Yes, so far the expansion is good, and fun. Buy it and you'll still be just as addicticted to TBC as you were to the orginal.
Rating:
- What more could you want?This expansion is an essential for people that have played the World of Warcraft pre expansion game. Despite a series of small bugs (most have which have been amended) the game has opened up vastly and now allows for a much larger scale of both PvE and PvP action.
New items gained relitivly easily in the new area 'The Outland' can help new players get up to date on items, so there is no feeling that you will be constantly playing the 'catch-up' game, and some of the easily obtained items even replace those that some of the more seasoned players have.
The support offered by blizzard both by in game gm's and on their official forums also makes this game one of a kind.
The game is truely enjoyable, with magical lands and wonderful creatures, some so well animated you may even feel bad killing them.
Well worth the money, best expansion i have seen in a game to date
Rating:
- Installed and loving it!True to form, Amazon delivered the goods on time and on the day specified meaning that this was waiting for me when I got home from work. Very excited, I started the install. Things did not go too swimmingly and I got strange error messages. After fiddling with my PC for a while, I did manage to get it installed so I guess it was my PC and nothing to do with the software. To play, you must have an existing World of Warcraft account and upgrade it to a Burning Crusade enabled account. This is free and a very painless process and took me about 5 seconds to complete.
Everything had gone relatively well and so I decided to log on. My normal high populated server was offline (probably due to peak time) so I decided to create a new character on one of the new servers. I decided on a Blood Elf warlock and very quickly got into the swing of things - the new Blood Elf area is absolutely stunning to look at and Blizzard have definitely got it right with looks and layout.
After a couple of hours just levelling, I decided to go onto my normal character and look at the new high level area. I was not disappointed and the server had stabilised itself. The new high-level Outlands area is visually stunning (that word again!) and a player is very quickly back into the swing of things. It is a long time since I have had the feeling of danger that you get when entering a new zone and monsters are actually able to kill you, but I definitely got that feeling again whilst exploring Outland. All in all, I have enjoyed things immensely.
If you are an existing player, get this game. If you are new to the game, get it with a normal copy of World of Warcraft - just be prepared to wonder where all the hours have gone.
Rating:
- TBC - Thank you Blizzard and Congratulations!I started playing The Burning Crusade (TBC) the moment the portal opened last night. Had it on pre-order :-))
Let me just walk you through the first few minutes in Outland...
You come through the dark portal and are immediately witness to a battle for the portal itself. Your first quest is to go to the fronts lines, so you're sent on a griffon to Hellfire Keep. When you are handed your first quest you suddenly realise that all your gear, including any epics, are going to be made redundant very very quickly. For those of you without any epics, lets just say just your gonna wet your pants! A few easy quests later and you've got used to killing monsters your level again, you've got 3 new pieces of awesome new gear, and you're 50Gold better off than when you started!
TBC is: the end of gold farmers; allows people to solo or work in smaller parties and still attain good gear; HUGE!!! the monsters the landscape (get an epic mount!); really really good fun; fixes holes in some professions and adds to all of them.
So far everyone who's gone through that portal has loved every minute. It has become apparent to me that blizzard are getting everyone's gear upto the level it needs to be with these early, and easy, quests. I can only imagine what challenges await me over the road to level 70. TBC>Genius!
Rating:
- US/Euro-English Compatibility problemI've pre-orderd "The Burning Crusade" has just came into my post today and I tried to install, but a message came out saying:
Unable to Install
This version of The Burning Crusade is only compatible with the European English version of World of Warcraft
I bought and installed a copy in Japan last October since I lived there but now I've moved to the UK and carried on playing. I've preorderd TBC on amazon.co.uk and came across this issue. Since WoW is not supported in Japan, I bought a copy at an imported game store, which I now know that it distributed the US version. So before buying this copy, please check which version of the former WoW first. If you have the US version like me, we're stuck at the moment. Seems to be a lot of people in the UK who has this problem by looking at the www.worldofwarcraft.com webforum so BEWARE.