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World of Warcraft: the Burning Crusade
By Kai Van Dusen, Staff Writer
Did you notice the unusual number of people crowding outside of Best
Buy, Circuit City and EB in a week ago? It was due to Blizzard
Entertainment's release of their latest addition to the Warcraft
series. World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade is an expansion to
Blizzard's already wildly popular World of Warcraft. This game sold
on record breaking amounts on its first day.
The expansion will add on to the
current World of Warcraft adding many features. Each faction has
received one new playable race, The Draenei, powerful mages from
another world, have been added to the Alliance. The Horde have
received the Blood Elves, who are High Elves turned into demonic
followers of the Horde.
In addition to the new races a
completely new world has been added. Once you get your character to
a high enough level you are eligible to play to the new max which
has been raised to 70. When you get to level 57, you may pass
through the dark portal and enter into Outland, which is the vast
shattered world of Draenor, the Orc's former homeland.
In order to more fully explore
Outland, new flying mounts have been added that allow you to soar
through the skies to new and previously unreachable areas. Outland
also contains new dungeons for players to explore and conquer
including Hellfire Citadel, the fortress of the evil Fel Orcs and
The Caverns of time, where you must prevent dark forces from
altering the course of time and changing the future.
Many other changes have also been
made. A new Arena battle system has been added that allows players
to compete in team dual tournaments where a group of friends can
take on another group from the opposing faction. Jewel Crafting has
been added as a learnable skill, so characters can attach jewels to
items and upgrade their attributes. There have been many new quests
and creatures added as well as new factions, or groups of people, to
gain reputation with.
I had a unique opportunity to go to
Blizzard and witness the launching of the game. At nine o'clock
employees at Blizzard's main office franticly started typing to
activate all of the new realms, the servers which are used to hold
information for the millions of characters the players create. The
expansion was launched and three hours later at midnight on January
16, the millions of fans rushed inside stores to buy the game they
camped out days in advance to get. Some games were able to have
their copy of the game signed by Blizzard's employees. Many are
still waiting to get their copies of the game which most stores sold
out of on the first day. As long as you are willing to pay the
monthly fee, World of Warcraft and its expansion, The Burning
Crusade are worth getting into.
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