As World of Warcraft players prepare for the launch of the game’s sixth expansion, Legion, I’m working my way through the previous five, beginning with our first trip to Outland in The Burning Crusade. It was so good nine years ago.
Rather than level up my shiny new Gnome Hunter instantly via the level 100 boost afforded folks who’ve purchased World of Warcraft: Legion, I decided to head for the level cap the old fashioned way, or at least today’s equivalent of it.
I started playing World of Warcraft when it launched back in 2004. It took me months to get to level 60 with my first main, a Rogue who no longer exists. Today, levelling a character to 60 takes me about ten hours. It’s a much shorter process, but between the ease of scoring a random dungeon group and the outstanding revamp of the old world that came in the Cataclysm expansion, it’s a very entertaining 10 hours.
Blizzard has spent the past 12 years refining World of Warcraft mechanics, basically paving over the path to higher levels, making the ride as smooth as possible.
This was my everything in early 2007.
2007’s Burning Crusade expansion pack happened between the game’s initial release and the move towards a more streamlined experience. With Cataclysm‘s revamp of the original game world, it’s the last remaining relic of a simpler time.
When Burning Crusade came out, stepping through the portal from Azeroth into Outland for the first time was a breathtaking experience. And entire alien planet stretched out before the player, ripe with potential and possibility. It was magical.
Oh, this again.
The visuals remain impressive. The experience however, is less “Oh wow!” and more “let’s get this over with”.
Blizzard was quest crazy in The Burning Crusade and they didn’t care who they hurt. Here is a quest to go to a central location. There are quests sending you in four different directions across a massive zone with no way to get there but your ground-based mount and the Num Lock key.
It wasn’t so bad back then. Each new quest took us somewhere new to see something we’d never seen before, even if those somethings and somewheres were on completely different sides of the map. With no post level 70 content on the horizon, players like me took our time, soaked it all in.
And while I wanted nothing more than to spend levels 60 through 70 in the dungeon finder, I decided I was going to quest my way through Outland part one, visiting every zone until I ran out of quests or hit level 70.
I made it through two zones and change.
By the time I entered Zangarmarsh, the second zone in Burning Crusade, I was level 64.
Dude, mushrooms.
I could have just skipped it, moved on to one of the other zones, but I there’s a special place in my heart for those fungus-covered lands. I do enjoy killing Naga and you’re not a true World of Warcraft player until you’ve entered the Mire Hydra club.
Older players will remember hating everything about this quest forever.
I went through all of Zangarmarsh, scouting the zone as a crow, sifting through Man-Thing poop, gathering so many Unidentified Plant Parts that they were coming out my ears. By the time I completed all 52 quests to earn the accompanying achievement, I was on the cusp of level 67. It was time for what’s still one of my top five World of Warcraft zones.
Nagrand, land of floating mountains, mystical sky lights and skybound waterfalls. It’s like something from a Roger Dean album cover and it never ceases to take my breath away.
Now I want to listen to Yes.
Note that I am flying in the screenshot. When Burning Crusade originally came out, players couldn’t purchase a flying mount until level 70 (though Druids are jerks and got fight form at 68.) I’m blaming the relaxed flight requirements on why I sped through the expansion so quickly this time around. When you don’t have to ride slowly across kilometres of terrain to kill five demons, you’re more apt to kill those five demons, instead of screwing off to another zone.
Between the ease of movement, dungeon finder bonuses (what, I had to play through some dungeons) and experience requirements per level today that are significantly lower than they were when Burning Crusade launched, my first ride through Outland was over in the blink of an eye. I only adventured in three zones. I never even went to Shattrath, the expansion’s hub city.
It’s strange. I went into The Burning Crusade last week dreading the experience and now I’m sad it was over so fast. The changes made to World of Warcraft since the first expansion have done these sprawling alien landscapes a great disservice. Maybe I’ll go back once I’ve hit level 110, burn through some more of those Legions, or just spend a lovely day hanging out in the grassy fields of Nagrand.
Next weekend: The Frozen Throne!
Or Wrath of the Lich King. We’ll buddy up Cataclysm and Pandalandia and round things out with a farewell to the garrisons of Outland II: This Time It’s Outlandier.
Comments
16 responses to “World Of Warcraft Expansions Revisited: It Burns When I Crusade”
BC was the peak people.
I actually started playing WOW only last year and Burning Crusade is where it actually picked up. Levelling to 60 was super slow for me, I kept taking breaks for like a month but then once I got started in Outland I was playing every day. I guess the areas were less generic fantasy which no longer cuts it these days.
Wrath was the peak for me. I didn’t mind BC but I felt like Wrath was where they got everything just about perfect. Like the idea that you could level from two different directions Borean Tundra or Howling Fjord. So it got some replayability for alts. They hadn’t completely butchered the talents like they did in later xpacs. Raids were varied and mostly fun (ToC wasn’t so great). You actually had a chance to raid in large or small groups, as a regular player or hardcore. You had a world PVP zone that was kinda cool. And basically plenty of stuff to do.
Wrath was great until ToC, ulduar was probably one of the most memorable instances for me – Algalon was such a great encounter (yogg wasn’t bad iether). After that tho… it was all downhill from there. Fucking trial of the champions is the WORST raid they’ve ever done it was the death knell of wow for me.
The introduction of multiple difficulties essentially made me unsub. My progression was new content – not loot, facerolling through content then doing it again with slightly different mechanics and larger numbers wasn’t appealing at all.
Never understood the hate for TOC. It was just a break from the tradition of killing loads of trash, and sure it didn’t take much to put together creatively but it was followed by one of the best raids ever ICC. For me personally though my favourite raids are the small ones with minimal trash killing between bosses like Terrace and ZA
Toc was boring, but I thought Icecrown Citadel was cool (scuse the pun). I liked the fact that once you got the first few down you could do the wings in whatever order you liked. The only thing that bugged me was the fact the decided to start sharing the 10 and 25 man lockout. Killed raiding twice on the same character 🙁
Took a few days off work when this came out because I could. I remember hitting the midnight release and promptly installed once I got home. First thing I did was create a blood elf pally and draenei shaman. Decided after a while to hit the new areas.
Nagrand was my all time favorite WoW area.
I can NOT believe that was 9 years ago…
Yeh Nagrand was damn awesome. It was like a shinier, prettier version of the Barrens for me. Nagrand in WoD is also awesome, I love the throwback elements like the Ring of Trials, though Ring of Trials was MUCH harder in TBC, now its just a one man job.
since wednesday when i won a beta key, ive been playing legion and its been awesome, it actually has a real wrath of the lich king feel to it, especially Stormheim which has a large Vrykul population and the music for the zone has bits of the grizzly hills and howling fjord in it.
Do Outlands Loremaster. Learn to hate the zones. Embrace the overwhelming hatred for Blade’s Edge Mountains.
Even with a flying mount Blade’s Edge is still a PITA. Nowdays you can generally skip it by doing the maps on the lower half of BC. Hellfire > Zanga > Nagrand > SMV
9 years..Wow.
I remember waiting at the midnight launch with 2 mates and then walking home through bankstown at 2am, having a quick power nap while it installed and then playing through till the night. Albeit those memories are fuzzy from lack of sleep.
I keep sayings that if Legion doesn’t rock my world it’ll be my last expansion for WoW.. but after 20 years of playing Warcraft it’d feel wrong…
Burning Crusade was awesome cause most of the offspecs were viable… even though you had to teach people it was true after so much bias to dirty offspecs.
First Feral Bear to tank PUG heroics on my server… people thought it was insane, funny to watch people autoquit on first sight of a druid tank… so I would whisper them the run time from boss mods.
The first time when Green is The New Purple became a things. BC was the end of wow for me, I had climbed to the peak before it came out, was one of a handful of fully geared droodads on my server, with full sets from all the raids preBC, had put insane amount of time in to the game.
Then BC came out and I looked into the future of doing it all again and couldn’t stomach all that effort. Droppe out of raiding, became a very casual gamer, let my subscription lapse.
I have gone back on occasion, played each expansion up until Pandaria, and won’t go back. Vanilla WoW is full of great memories, but the community has changed too much these days.
But you can ride camels now…