Product
Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #1886 in Video Games
- Brand:
Blizzard Entertainment
- Model: 72618
- Released on:
2007-01-16
- ESRB Rating: Teen
- Platforms: Mac, Windows
2000, Windows XP
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 1.50" h
x 5.50" w x 7.50" l, 2.00 pounds
Features
- This
game requires a monthly fee, and an internet connection to play
- Two
new playable races, including the magical Blood Elves
- An
entirely new continent, Outland, can be reached through the Dark Portal
- Hundreds of new quests, items, monsters, and more
- Pack
increases the level cap to 70
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Product
Description
Blizzard Entertainment took online role playing by
storm with their hit title, World of Warcraft. With mind-boggling
improvements in graphics, gameplay networking, and interface -- really
every category -- this game became the crown prince of the genre. World
of Warcraft players will be excited by the approaching release of the
new expansion pack:
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade.
This pack expands the already massive, award-winning multiplayer online
role-playing game by tremendous bounds, adding new races, lands,
battlegrounds, professions and items, and much, much more. Although no
release date has been set, here is sample of what you can expect from
The
Burning Crusade.
The Burning Crusade
is the highly anticipated, unreleased expansion pack for Blizzard's
"World of Warcraft." |
What lies in Medivh's
tower? View larger. |
Blood Elves emerge as
a new race in The Burning Crusade. View larger. |
The Blood Elves seek
the golden destiny that has been promised to them. View larger. |
Warcraft's newest
continent: Outland. View larger. |
Once a beautiful
land, Outland has been ravaged by war. View larger. |
Outland is a vital
strategic location. View larger. |
The
expansion pack features an increase in the level cap to 70. There are
two new playable races, including the magical Blood Elves that you can
read more about below. The other race has not yet been released by
Blizzard. There will be new starting zones in Quel'Thalas and beyond.
Another eye-opening addition is the entirely new, unexplored continent
of Outland that is reachable through the Dark Portal. Plus, you'll find
many new high-level dungeons to explore in Azeroth, Outland, and
elsewhere that will substantially boost gameplay. There are new flying
mounts in Outland; tons of new and dangerous monsters (including epic
world bosses); hundreds of new quests and items; and even a new
profession: Jewelcrafting. Of course this isn't the end of the list --
this is just a glimpse of what Blizzard has planned for their unreleased
expansion pack.
The New Story, the Rumors, and More
Several
years have passed since the Burning Legion's defeat at Mount Hyjal and
the races of Azeroth have continued to rebuild their once shattered
lives. With renewed strength, the heroes of the Horde and Alliance have
begun to explore new lands, and have broken through the Dark Portal to
investigate the realms beyond the known world. In this expansion pack,
The
Burning Crusade refers to the Burning Legion's ongoing efforts to
destroy life on Azeroth. To date, the Burning Legion's exploits have
been documented in Warcraft III and in the
War of the Ancients
novel trilogy. As part of the expansion pack, players will now be able
to travel through the Dark Portal to confront the Legion on otherworldly
battlefields.
Although only one race has been revealed, Blizzard
has announced plans to unveil details about possible additional races at
a later date. On the other hand, many details have been released about
the new continent, Outland. Players last visited Outland in Warcraft
III: The Frozen Throne, alongside Illidan as he conquered the Pit Lord
Magtheridon's domain. Players will also gain access to Quel'Thalas, the
region to the northeast of the Forsaken lands, where the Blood Elves
reside. Blizzard says that this expansion pack holds even more new areas
that are ripe for player exploration -- additional details will be
revealed in the months ahead.
Blizzard also has plans to add new
dungeons and battlegrounds with the expansion, though the exact number
has not yet been determined. One upcoming dungeon that has players
excited is Karazhan, which is located within Medivh's tower. Because
Medivh has played such a central role in Warcraft lore, Blizzard is
convinced that longtime players will be especially interested in seeing
what Karazhan contains. As for battlegrounds, Blizzard has released very
little information. However, they have announced plans to make some of
the battles from the past accessible through the Caverns of Time.
Blood
Elves: The New Race
Thousands of years ago, the exiled
Highborne landed on the shores of Lordaeron and founded the enchanted
kingdom of Quel'Thas. These high elves, as they called themselves,
created a fountain of vast, magical energies within the heart of their
land -- the Sunwell. Over time, they grew dependant on the Sunwell's
unstable energies, regardless of the bitter lessons they'd learned in
ages past.
During the Third War, the villainous Prince Arthas
invaded Quel'Thalas and reduced the once-mighty realm to rubble and
ashes. His undead army decimated nearly all of the high elven
population. In addition, he used the Sunwell's energies to resurrect a
powerful undead Lich, Kel'thuzad, thereby fouling the Sunwell's mystical
waters. The few elven survivors, realizing that they had been cut off
from the source of their arcane power, grew increasingly volatile and
desperate.
In the midst of the elves' darkest hour came Kael'thas
Sunstrider, the last of Quel'Thalas' royal bloodline. Kael, as he was
commonly known, knew that the remnant of his people would not long
survive without the nourishing magic that once empowered them. Renaming
his people "blood elves" in honor of their fallen countrymen, Kael
taught the survivors how to tap into ambient mystical energies -- even
demonic energies -- in order to sate their terrible thirst for magic. In
search of a new destiny for his people, Kael'thas ventured to the
remote world of Outland where he encountered the fallen night elf,
Illidan. Under Illidan's watchful eye, Kael and his blood elves regained
much of their former power.
Unfortunately, the blood elves
practice of embracing demonic energies caused their former comrades in
the Alliance to shun them. Thus, the remaining blood elves on Azeroth
look desperately to the Horde to help them reach Outland where they can
reunite with Kael'thas and achieve the golden destiny he has promised
them.
Outland: The New Continent
Once the
beautiful homeworld of the orcs, all that remains of Draenor is the
scattered wastes of Outland. Following the Second War, the Alliance
invaded Draenor by crossing through the Dark Portal. To their horror,
they discovered that Ner'zhul -- the dark warlord of Horde -- had
constructed a series of new gateways that could lead the beaten Horde to
newer, unspoiled worlds. As the Alliance forces closed in around him,
Ner'zhul opened his gateways as a means of escape. However, his plan
backfired and the gateway's clashing energies resulted in a massive
catastrophic explosion that ultimately ripped the world of Draenor to
pieces.
Nearly thirteen years later -- towards the end of the
Third War -- the fallen night elf, Illidan, discovered that huge chunks
of Draenor still existed, floating upon the astral winds of the Twisting
Nether. After his defeat at the hands of the evil Prince Arthas,
Illidan fled to the remnants of Draenor and dubbed them "Outland." He
quickly seized control of the chaotic region and sealed the last of
Ner'zhul's gateways.
Though he is the undisputed ruler of the
ravaged land, Illidan lives in fear that he will be discovered by his
powerful enemies -- most notably Arthas, the new Lich King, and the
remaining Lords of the Burning Legion. For now, Outland is home to a
number of scattered draenei tribes, primitive orcs, and powerful, arcane
creatures of the Nether itself. Agents of the Burning Legion have also
targeted the region as a vital strategic location in their unending
Burning Crusade to scour all life from the universe.
What else can
expected? Blizzard has tantalized Warcraft players with the brief
glimpse into
The Burning Crusade's storyline. Will these heroes
find friends or foes? What dangers and rewards lie in wait beyond the
Dark Portal? And what will they do when they discover that the demons
they thought were vanquished have returned to renew their terrible
Burning Crusade? These and other questions will remain unanswered until
the gameplay can be explored by role-playing Warcrafters.
|
System Requirements |
| Minimum | Recommended |
| Operating System | PC: Microsoft Windows XP or Windows Vista (with latest
Service Packs)
Mac: Mac OS X 10.4.11 or newer |
| CPU | PC: Intel Pentium 4
1.3 GHz or AMD Athlong XP 1500+
Mac: PowerPC G5 1.6 GHz or Intel Core
Duo processor | PC: Dual-core processor, such as Intel Pentium D
or AmD Athlong 64 X2
Mac: Intel 1.8 GHz processor or better |
| Graphics Hardware | PC: 3D
graphics processor with Hardware Transfor and Lighting with 32 MB VRAM,
such as an ATI Radeon 7200 or NVIDIA GeForce2 class card or better
Mac:
3D graphics processor with Hardware Transform and Lighting with 64 MB
VRAM, such as ATI Radeon 9600 or NVIDIA GeForce Ti 4600 class card or
better | PC: 3D Graphics processor with Vertex and Pixel Shader
capabilities with 128 MB VRAM, such as an ATI Radeon X1600 or NVIDIA
GeForce 7600 GT class card or better
Mac: 3D graphics processor with
Vertex and Pixel Shader capability with 128 MB VRAM, such as ATI Radeon
X1600 or NVIDIA 7600 class card or better. |
| Memory | PC: 512 MB (1 GB
for Vista)
Mac: 1 GB | PC: 1 GB (2 GB for Vista)
Mac: 2 GB |
| Hard Drive Space | 15 GB of free space |
| All
Platform Requirements | Keyboard and mouse,
required for controls. Other input devices not supported. Active
broadband Internet connection required to play. |
Customer
Reviews
Lots of New Content
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 Blizzard has announced on
their forums that they're working on allowing players who already
upgraded using the basic expansion to then also upgrade using the
collector's edition in order to get the limited edition pet. You'll have
to call Blizzard's billing service line with the unused collector's
edition expansion key, so it's slightly more work than upgrading
directly with the CE, but it can now be done.
The best expansion to an MMORPG I have seen.
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 awesome and different. While you still have those grind +
kill + get x of this quests, you have an assortment of new quests as
well. You can summon bosses, and do bombing missions, they are all new,
and they are all pure fun. I even love questing at 70, the money and
even some of the loot are great to have. I am working on the Netherdrake
questline at the moment, and I cant wait to have my own transparent
giant dragon to fly around the outlands on. There are loads of quests
leftover at 70, and they all have very good rewards at the end of each
chain.
Why doesn't the Burning Crusade get a 5/5 overall? For one
reason: they did not revamp Azeroth. Revisiting Azeroth at 70 is like
attending a funeral, its stupid, and its pathetic how useless anything
from Azeroth is at 70. The quests leading up to level 58 (when you can
enter outlands)still have sub par rewards, and besides the opening of
Karazhan and Caverns of Time, they have done absolutely NOTHING with the
world outside of BC. I believe they really need to revamp the
questlines and the rewards to make it more rewarding for people to go
back to Azeroth to do the old quests and content.
Other than
that, The Burning Crusade is the most extensive expansion to a game I
have seen, and it is definitely worth the $40 to jump on the ship. I tip
my hat to Blizzard for making an incredibly fun and rewarding game even
better.
Don't believe the ravings of
the perpetually grumpy
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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