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Let the Crusade begin!

Earlier this month the gaming world (well, about eight million gamers anyway, according to Blizzard) hollered a resounding "WOW!" as World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade was released after months of anticipation.  What would the new areas, classes, and monsters be like?  How much would it add to the WoW experience?  Would it be worth our while?

Now those questions can finally be answered.

As noted in our recent initial impressions article, the new areas, character classes, races (two of 'em) and creatures in Burning Crusade are, as expected, pretty freakin' cool.  What it adds to the WoW experience is purely subjective, of course.  While the game clearly adds exciting new content in terms of the new locations and enemies, a raise to the level cap means a return to level grinding for many players and this can get dull.

For me, the experience of tromping through the Outland facing new beasties and using flying mounts was well worth the wait for the expansion.  Blizzard has taken its already impressive World and expanded upon it exponentially without upsetting the apple cart of its original framework.  What this means is that the expansion doesn't break a lot of new ground - this plays exactly like WoW has from the beginning with no real changes to the hacking, slashing, or pursuit of the coolest and rarest items.  You and thousands of your closest friends can keep right at it like you always have.  While this lack of innovation can be a downside to many games; here it is worthy of a sigh of relief.  The system wasn't broken, so they didn't need to fix it.