The greatest news about the Burning Crusade is......You don't have to be a lifeless player to enjoy the game!
At first, let’s start with the most popular features of the expansion. The level cap has been increased to 70, this might lead some people to think that it’s a very long way to reach that level, but worry not… The new continent, Outland, offers a whole new experience to the players. There are hundreds of quests in Outland that can keep you busy for a very long time. There have been some changes to the system, killing enemies will give you less experience points now, but in exchange, quests give you more experience points than they did in the old WoW. This encourages people to do quests rather than just kill enemies to level up. The boring quests from the old WoW, such as going 5 zones away to deliver a message, and then take another 6 zones away to deliver a second message. Are no longer present in Outland, there are a few quests which give you such objectives, but in exchange, they give you some really nice rewards to avoid making it a boring quest. You need to be at least level 58 to enter Outland through the Dark Portal, this is to avoid some bad players who do quests which are ten levels higher than theirs and then they disturb the high level players to help them with it.
The new continent, Outland, consists of 7 totally unique zones. You won’t see any zone that looks like the other. For example, in the old WoW, Feralas looked like Un’Goro crater, Telderasil looked like Ashenvale, the Burning Steppes looked like Searing Gorge….etc. In Outland, you won’t see such similarities. They are all completely different from each other. The quests they offer are sufficient to make you reach level 70 quickly. If you ask me, I’ve reached level 70 while I didn’t even explore 3 zones in Outland, and all I was doing was solo quests. No group quests nor farming on enemies. Yet I still reached level 70. So from here you can know that even if you only do the solo quests, you can simply reach level 70 without worrying.
The solo quest rewards of the first zone in Outland offers weapons and armors that are nearly as strong as the 40 man raid dungeons in the old WoW! So you don’t need to get good gears in Azeroth before entering the world of outland. The quest rewards of Outland are indeed unmatchable!
Blizzard has done a very great job in balancing between PvE and PvP. In the old WoW, Blizzard did not care about PvP much, they were mainly focusing on instances (dungeons) and especially the big instances. Which has made the game carry the name (For WoW addicts only). Though in the Burning Crusade, they have improved it in a way that both PvE and PvP are balanced with their rewards. People who are hardcore in instances no longer get better stuffs than people who are hardcore in PvP, and vice versa.
You can notice that Blizzard cares about PvP players from the new outdoor PvP objectives in some zones in Outland. Along with some cool rewards for people who participate in such activities. The new Arena battle is the best of the best when it comes for PvP. Offering powerful rewards for the players, as well as making the Arena Gear look almost the same as the raid gears to avoid people who were doing raids just because of the gear’s looks. There is also a new battleground, Eye of the Storm, which is only available to people level 61 and above. The new battle ground’s objective can be complicated for people who enter the battleground without any idea of what they have to do, that’s why it is suggested for people to take a look at the objectives before they start the battle, or else they might make the whole team lose just because they entered the battleground with no idea of what must be done.
As for the instances, Blizzard noticed that Dire Maul was a very exiting instance for players in the old WoW because it was split into 3 wings and this has made the instance shorter. Shorter instances means better chances for casual players to enjoy instances. And so Blizzard has added lots of Dire-Maul type instance in Outland. These instances can all be done in less than 2 hours, unless your group members keep going away from keyboard and such. With a good group, many of the instances can even be done in just an hour! Another exiting feature about the instances in the Burning Crusade is that there is no such thing as 40 man instances. The highest cap is now 25 man instances. This can make it easier for the guilds to do the high end instance without having to bother to gather 40 people. 25 people can also ensure that the raid is well controlled and has better community than ever.
All in all, The Burning Crusade is a very well made expansion pack. I’m very glad that Blizzard cares about the casual players who have lives in the real world. It has all been noticed from the improved PvP, excellent solo quests, and the reduced time and raid cap for instances. Another thing I’ve forgot to point out is that the music of the Burning Crusade is just awesome! Unlike the old WoW, which most of its music ware boring. The Burning Crusade is a great step to improving the WoW’s name without turning its players into 24 hour playing slaves!