Two New Races To Add To The Mix

The Burning Crusade brings with it two new races; the Blood Elves and the Draenei, each with their own starting area. The Blood Elves start on Sunstrider Isle in the Eversong Woods, which is located just north of the eastern Plaguelands. These early areas share the same art and design quality with Outland. Eversong Woods looks like it's in perpetual autumn, and the Blood Elf architecture accentuates that with all the reds and golds. When you move from Sunstrider Isle to the ruins of Silvermoon City, you start to see the damage that was caused when Arthas razed the city in the events of Warcraft III. In fact, the path of Arthas' army has left a trail of blackened earth and residual undead monsters called The Dead Scar. The path bisects Eversong Woods and divides the ruins of Silvermoon from the flourishing active section. Silvermoon City, with its magic sweeping brooms and impeccable cleanliness, certainly doesn't feel very Hordish. But as you walk through the city you'll notice some strange conversations and activities that point to something sinister underneath all the beauty and smiles. There is definitely more story going on from levels one-20 in Eversong than previous starting areas, and that makes the same old kill-and-fetch quests more enjoyable. Moving from the bright sunlight of Eversong and into the dark smokiness of Ghostlands reminds players, again, of what happened to the Blood Elves to put them in a position to side with the Horde and Illidan. It seems Blizzard is injecting World of Warcraft with more story and lore with the expansion.

The Draenei starting areas, as well as their origin, are a little more "out there" than the rest of the denizens of Azeroth in that it involves a crashed space ship. It's referred to as an "interdimensional generation ship", but it's a spaceship pure and simple. Once again, here is an instance where the Burning Crusade adds some heavy sci-fi elements to an otherwise fantasy setting, but in a way that does not feel like a violent genre collision. The Draenei starting areas are called the Azuremyst Isles and are located adjacent to Darkshore. Characterized by lots of cold colors with red crystals highlighting the landscape, the Azuremyst Isles feature quests that lay out the story of the Draenei, and, like the Blood Elves, there is much more story with connecting quests involved. These starting areas are excellent additions to the world, but it would have been nice to get a couple of low-level dungeons to go with them.

View Slide Show (16 images)

A new Ragefire Chasm or Deadmines would really have rounded out these areas. Once you near level 20 in either race, you'll find that you're being funneled into the regular Warcraft content and back to the old areas, but as expansions go, this one still packs a good deal of new content.

Conclusion

The Burning Crusade has brought many changes to the World of Warcraft, and most if not all of them are improvements. The focus on creative art design and lore integration with quests certainly adds some depth to what was becoming a bit of a tired level grind. Two new races to mix up the aesthetics, and plenty of new areas are available to keep both new and old players busy.

This expansion lands about two and a half years after the launch, and while Blizzard has promised annual expansions, I'm not sure that their development calendar allows for that kind of speed. They have been releasing free content packs in the form of game patches with some regularity, and in another MMO those would be expansions unto themselves. It has been over 30 days after the launch of The Burning Crusade, and most players are still working through the secrets of the new areas. Blizzard and World of Warcraft do not appear to be slowing down anytime soon, and the millions of players worldwide will continue to ravenously devour everything they produce.

Join our discussion on this topic