Burning Response Pt 1

By: Eric M. Martin

Thursday February 15, 2007

World of Warcraft:The Alliance
It's been nearly a month and the Burning Crusade has spread like a fever, infecting PCs across the nation. Even with the huge success of World of Warcraft, the question remains: Is Burning Crusade worth the investment? This article contains the opinions of only a small fraction of Azeroth's population, so it's not going to be totally inclusive. However, there have been a lot of positive comments. The following comments are from an Alliance group that plays on the PvE server, Medhiv. In order to protect their identities from possible spammers, their character names have not been disclosed.

Human Paladin, Level 63

"From a Paladin point of view, I like the fact that there are a lot more armor options. All the armor and weapons in Outland are stepped up. Lots of critical strike gear, items that increase damage and stats, tons of good jewelry. There are people running around that have replaced some of their Tier 3 equipment with some of the things found in Outland. The flying mounts are really nice, but they're a bit expensive. The basic mount, complete with training, costs 900 gold to start but finding money is not hard. Starting in Outland and working up to the second area, I've made almost 200 Gold. Most of that money was made through vendor trash items and selling a lot of the quest items I couldn't use."

"Burning Crusade has put a good deal of effort into appeasing the casual player. Only the dedicated players will continue to receive the best in raid gear, but there's a lot of decent stuff still floating around for everyone to get. For me, it's a lot easier to acquire epic drops in Heroic level dungeons when I can. I don't have time to be in a raiding guild. I won't be waist deep in epic gear, but at least there's a chance."

"Jewelcrafting is nice. Before the expansion, it was hard for low-level characters to get their hands on jewelry. Usually your first piece of jewelry was gotten around the low twenties. Now low-level characters can get their hands on jewelry and high-level characters can make way to get even better stuff with Jewelcrafting."

Human Priest, Level 45

"My Priest hasn't been affected very much in Burning Crusade. The new talents don't change my core Priestness. I'm still a Priest, I still heal people. This expansion has mostly changed the high-end and low-end of the game. I enjoy playing a lot of low-level characters in the PVP battlegrounds, especially "Capture the Flag." Having the Draenei and Blood Elves changes the dynamic greatly. For example, having Horde Paladins and Alliance Shamans adjusts the balance."

"One of World of Warcraft's improvements over previous MMOs deals with the introductory phase of the game. There are quests designed specifically for newbies in order to get them gear and teach them how to play their respective classes. Burning Crusade has improved further on this concept. The starting areas for the new classes have a better design in their introductions. For example, each race has special abilities, but nothing in the initial release did anything to teach players about those abilities. This expansion integrates sort of a racial tutorial for both the Draenei and Blood Elves in their respective starting quests. Furthermore, in the newer areas, quests are more varied. It's not just "find all the purple rocks" or "slay the blue scorpions" anymore. Players will be asked to dismantle spaceship parts with a pickaxe or deliver messages by elephant, maybe even become the chosen one by saving a tribe of Furbolgs from an ancient evil."

Gnome Frost Mage, Level 62

"Money is really easy to make in the new zones. It is no longer a problem to afford anything you want, which is really nice. The experience is also an easy gain. This is what really stands out the most with "Burning Crusade", but there are some bad things about it. A lot of people have spent a great deal of time getting a lot of really nice weapons and armor, and they're already replacing it less than an hour into the expansion."

"Overall, the gaming experience is somewhat of a restoration into the game. It brings back the feel that we had when we first started playing WOW. People were getting bored with nothing to do. Now there's a whole new area with seven new zones to explore. Also, it's clear that Blizzard took the time to fix a lot of the problems in the game with the new release, especially with the professions. As an Enchanter, the changes made to the user interface have been extremely helpful."

"Personally, I feel that the PVP battlegrounds are a huge waste of time. People are spending ridiculous amount of time acquiring Honor Marks in order to get certain pieces of gear. In the meantime, they're getting no experience and making no progress. For me, going out there and getting things done gets me better gear in the long run and is a better use of my time."

Night Elf Rogue, Level 64

"The new zones provide a nice change in scenery as opposed to the same zones everyone's been looking at for the past two years. In addition to just being different, they also manage to be very visually pleasing. The Blood Elf area is, in my opinion, the most beautiful starting area amongst all playable races. Little visual touches like the tiny dancing brooms and twirling piles of books add the right kind of character for the Blood Elves."

"In addition to finding random loot on a corpse, some monsters can be harvested after they've been defeated, as though they were a resource node that provided herbs or minerals. This can really relieve some of the stress that comes with searching high and low for highly contested mineral veins or overpicked herb bushes."

"With the release of the new expansion, it's not quite as necessary to be part of a guild that can field a 40-man raid if you want to obtain higher end gear. It narrows down the gap between casual players and the 'professionals.'"

"P.S. - Blood Elf Paladins need to die."

From the comments above, it's clear that there are a few things that seem to stand out with the new release. Chief among them is the new balance of monetary gain. One of the things I would hear the most from players during the initial run of the game was the incredible difficulty of earning money early on. Now it seems that the cash flows a little more freely. There has been large talk that this availability may cause inflation problems within the game's economy, but not too many people seem to be complaining.

There is also a general observance that a lot of the "bugs" have been fixed from previous patches. From other players that I've spoken with, many are happy with the correction of what they felt were minor problems with many of the game's skill trees for their respective characters. Coming from my days playing Diablo II, it can be quite frustrating when a new patch totally ruins a skill that you've been focusing on, and when a later patch fixes that problem, it may cause a whole new one. Even if there are other patches to come, Burning Crusade appears to have a steady grip on things as of late.

Keep your eyes peeled for the second installment of The Burning Response, which will include comments from a group of Horde Players that gather on the RP-PVP server, Scarlet Crusade!