The Burning Crusade is a required purchase for anyone that enjoyed its predecessor
There are two major additions to the game: two new races and a new world: Draenor. In addition to the base races of the original title, gamers have the choice to play for either the Alliance or Horde faction: The Draenei and the Blood Elves. Each race comes with its own unique appearance, special abilities, and class selection. The Horde gains access to the Paladin class though the Blood Elves, while the Alliance gain the Shaman class with the Draenei. Each new race also has their own starting zones, smaller additions to the Azeroth landscape including two islands for the Draenei accessible by ship and two zones that combined make up a peninsula for the Blood Elves. Both areas offer unique mob (the term used for enemy units) models, quests, quest rewards, loot, and other benefits for the new races, as well as two new capital cities.
In addition to the aforementioned, gamers have access to a new profession, "Jewelcrafting," which allows players to create necklaces and rings that provide benefits to their character, as well as summonable trinket pets and gems to enhance their equipment. Players will even gain access to flying mounts as they reach sufficient level, and will need those mounts to reach certain areas.
In effect, WoW developer Blizzard Entertainment has added more of everything: more races, more world, more professions, more craftable items, more loot, more enemies, more dungeons, more world player-versus-player (PvP) objectives, and more story. Where the end-game focus of the original was on pushing back the undead Scourge in the Plaguelands of Azeroth and the ancient insect menace in Silithus, the new end-game focus is on fighting back against the Burning Legion, the army of demons and corrupted races that work to exterminate all life in the universe in order to return to its original state of pure energy and chaos.
The story is larger in scope, and it works to a degree from the moment the player steps through the Dark Portal of Azeroth to enter Draenor. Hundreds of NPCs square off in an epic battle at the very steps of the Portal, making the player feel as if he or she has stepped into something much bigger than him or herself.
From the moment the player steps through the gate they are going to find their Azeroth gear obsolete. The basic quests in Hellfire Peninsula, the first province gamers enter on Draenor, make Level 60 end-game raiding gear obsolete. In fact, most characters will find themselves completely decked out in new gear before they leave the province. Moving from level 60 to level 70 is a difference as dramatic as level 1 to level 60, with dramatic increases in the effectiveness of equipment and the items the player can use.
The Burning Crusade retains much of the feel of the original by using many of the originals models in addition to the new content. Players will recognize the trademark architecture of Alliance and Horde structures, particularly those of the human and orc settlements, while they are introduced to the new architecture of the Draenei and Blood Elves. The landscape is dramatically different, however. Draenor is a shattered world, and looks very much the part. Vast plots of land float in emptiness of space, and bands of energy curl in the sky above the player. Waterfalls and pools of fel-energy flow over the edges of the continent into nothingness. Each zone has its own distinct feel. For example, Hellfire Peninsula offers broken landscape of barren rock and fire, while Zangarmarsh offers a vast swamp teeming with life (mostly of the mushroom variety).
To complement the vastness that seems to be a trademark of the expansion, the soundtrack illustrates the larger-than-life action on-screen with a paced classical score that changes depending on the location and action. The score is to The Burning Crusade as John Williams helps define a Star Wars title, and it certainly enhances the on-screen action.
For all its additions there are the inevitable drawbacks. While the new races offer the Alliance and Horde access to classes they sorely needed to balance combat between the two, the Draenei do not necessarily fit with the fantasy theme of the game. The race is not affectionately referred to in-game as, "Blue Space Cows." The gripe continues with Draenor and even the loot. Draenor is very much another planet, a mix of magic and technology. Crashed interdimensional ships, ray guns, and giant rainbow axes are par for the course, which may detract from the medieval fantasy aspect of the original. The armor is also more colorful than in the original, leading to the term, "clown suits." Some players may forgive the science fiction feel of Draenor for the benefits, but others will miss the intimate medieval atmosphere of Azeroth.
There is also added complexity due to the inclusion of "sockets" for some items. Sockets allow players to customize certain weaponry and armor to increase certain statistics on top of the existing professional ability to enchant those items. In the end socketed items seem like additional complexity without purpose. Developers might just as easily have made items class-specific, increased the original drop, or added additional enchantments. Any of the aforementioned would have made an already complex game a little less complicated.
Finally, the game continues to try to be everything to everyone, and in some instances this can frustrate some gamers while making others feel gypped. Some changes are welcome; there are far fewer 40-man raids such as Ahn'Qiraj and Molten Core, which required a massive group of coordinated players and major investment in terms of time and gearing up your character appropriately. The Azeroth 40-man raids are made obsolete by the superior gear and access of new 10- and 5-man dungeons. This is also one of the casualties of the expansion, as getting groups to run old-world content becomes more challenging with more players on Draenor rather than Azeroth. Further, the gear that players gain access to in battlegrounds - PvP-specific arenas - is often equivalent if not superior to gear players may take days or weeks of raiding in world and dungeon drops to acquire.
Still, many of these drawbacks are not necessarily exclusive to The Burning Crusade, and Blizzard has done an amazing job creating a world with thousands of quests and its own distinct look and feel while retaining elements of the original. Without question anyone who enjoyed the original content will thrill to play The Burning Crusade, and enjoy all of the new places to visit, enemies to kill, and loot to acquire.