With a mind-boggling eight million subscribers contributing to first-day sales of 2.4 million copies worldwide, attracting new customers wasn't a problem Blizzard Entertainment faced with The Burning Crusade, the first retail expansion for World of Warcraft. So it's probably little surprise to see that the basic formula hasn't changed: you're still taking on quests, beating up monsters and endlessly pursuing better loot alongside thousands of other players.

But the fact that it doesn't break much new ground doesn't change the fact that Burning Crusade is an overwhelming success: there's enough new content to keep most players busy for months, and many of the new areas and quests easily outclass those of the original. Without tampering with its addictive formula, the expansion still manages to change the landscape so dramatically that it's now virtually pointless to continue your adventures in Azeroth without it. And we're loving it.

Space Shammys and Evil Pallys

The first main draw of the expansion is its two new races: the Draenei (Alliance) and Blood Elves (Horde). While the Draenei are far from ugly, the Blood Elves are easily the sexier of the two (if you were to poll players, they'll likely tell you this is Blizzard's way of getting more people to join the Horde). The character creation options are still somewhat limited compared to other MMOs, but the two new races do have a little extra variety in terms of hairstyles and such.

Also new are the options for Blood Elves to roll as paladins (formerly exclusive to Alliance characters), and for Draenei to create shaman (previously Horde-only). There was some initial griping in the WoW community when the news first broke, but 10 days after Burning Crusade's release, it's still too early to tell how it will pan out: it'll be months before we can properly evaluate the full impact of these classes standing side-by-side in raids.

Both new races boast new starting areas and home cities, and it's hard to decide which is more beautiful. The Blood Elf starting area, north of the Eastern Plaguelands, is a masterpiece of color, a forest filled with oranges and reds. The Draenei main city of Exodar, off the northwestern coast of Kalimdor, which is actually a crashed spaceship (just the first of many sci-fi-ish nods Blizzard has injected into this fantasy world), is equally striking. We've never had a shortage of good things to say about Blizzard's art department over the years, and it'll be hard not to spend a great deal of time just staring at the scenery in these new locations.

These starting areas are overflowing with quests, which often feel a notch above the lower-level quests from the original races. As you go through the early levels, there's a lot of attention paid to how these two races ended up in Azeroth, and while there are plenty of kill-the-thingie or collect-the-whosiwhatsis quests, there are also more interesting tasks as well.

The only real downside to the new races is that the fun basically stops at level 20. From there, you have to go back to the "old world" and continue with the previously existing level 20-60 content. The result is that it's possible to churn through the lowbie areas in just a few nights, which can leave you feeling a little empty when it's over. At the least, it would have been nice to have some new lowbie dungeons, like the Deadmines or Wailing Caverns.

Outland

While the Draenei and Blood Elves are nice additions to World of Warcraft, there's little question that the meat of Burning Crusade is targeted at higher-level characters. An entire new continent called Outland has been added to the game (accessible from the Dark Portal in the Blasted Lands), consisting of seven new zones that allow players to level from 60 to a new max of 70.

Each of these new zones is fairly well sized, and just as jammed with quests as the new lowbie starting areas. The first zone, Hellfire Peninsula, has several quest hubs, with tasks ranging from the usual killings and collections to more unique tasks like airborne bombing runs. Some zones, like Nagrand, maintain a consistent theme throughout, while others, such as the Blade's Edge Mountains, feel like several smaller zones jammed together. There are several showstopper areas in Outland, like Toshley's Station, a compact desert area that's basically Gnomeregan on steroids, or the entire zone of Netherstorm, a set of floating rocks set against a purple sky and peppered with eco-domes. At times, it seems like every zone in Outland is prettier than the last.

The quality of the quests in Outland has been bumped up in addition to the quantity. Throughout the new zones, there are special bosses to be summoned, numerous escort events, quests where you disguise yourself as the enemy and gather information, and even a few events where you hop on a gryph and enjoy the scenery. There's an entertaining "Ring of Blood" arena event in Nagrand, where you take on a series of elite bosses, and almost everything in the aforementioned Toshley's Station seems to involve some crazy gadget. Even the straightforward collection quests often have little scripted events attached to them, making the journey from 60-70 a memorable one.

Outland is also filled with many new dungeons for higher-level players, and as was the case before, some are better than others. Hellfire Citadel's first two wings are colorful and a breeze to get through. Coilfang Reservoir feels like Maraudon II, and less exciting. The various wings of Auchindoun are filled with interesting bosses, and then there's the Caverns of Time, a unique instance where players go back in time to (among other things) escort Thrall out of Durnholde Keep. While there are more than enough quests to get players to 70 without doing any dungeons at all, you really haven't seen all of Burning Crusade until you've made at least one run through each of the five-man dungeons, which also offer better loot than public areas.

One unfortunate side effect all the new Outland content is the instant obsolescence of all the previous level 60 areas. If you were in a raiding guild farming Blackwing Lair or better, odds are your gear will hold up for a few levels, but once-valuable items from raid bosses like Hakkar or Ossirian can now be replaced by easy-to-complete quests at level 61 or 62. While this gives players who have never raided a chance to close the gap and maybe get a fresh start, it would be a shame if level 60 instances like Blackrock Spire, Dire Maul, and Stratholme, and even 40-man raids like Molten Core and Onyxia became completely ignored. Hopefully, Blizzard will fine-tune these areas as time goes on, tweaking loot tables or possibly retrofitting these old areas with difficulty options.

Before starting in Outland with my level 60 warrior, I initially wondered if I'd be able to reach level 70 in time for this review (a span of a week and a half). I originally considered this a pipe dream -- that it would take about three weeks for level 70 players to become commonplace. Turns out I underestimated by a fair margin: players started hitting 70 in just a few days, and a week after a launch, my own server had over 100 players already maxed out. As of this review, my own character sits halfway through 69, and some players have already begun wishing that there were a few more areas of Outland, even after a solid 60-120 hours of quest content.

The truth is, just as there was practically an entire new game's worth of content starting at level 60 in World of Warcraft, reaching level 70 will only be the beginning of the adventure for many players. At level 70, it's possible to re-do the new dungeons at a "heroic" setting, with harder monsters and better loot, and some of these dungeons are required before you can gain access to some of the new raid content. The quality of that raid content, however, will remain a mystery for some time -- while many players may have reached level 70, it'll take a little more time for guilds to field 25-man squads capable of accessing the raid dungeons.

If you're not interested in the raiding game, Burning Crusade adds a number of PvP events to the higher-level areas of Outland. Hellfire Peninsula, Zangarmarsh, Terokkar Forest, and Nagrand all have special PvP-related quests, allowing you to get kickass gear without ever setting foot in a dungeon. (A special PvP arena exists in the Blade's Edge Mountains, but has yet to go active.)

A single new jewelcrafting profession has been added to World of Warcraft for Burning Crusade. This allows players to add stat-improving gems to new socketed items added to the game, evoking memories of Blizzard's Diablo games. All the other professions have been given higher-level recipes to chase down, and almost every profession has some useful items to be made.

Finally, while it may not be the most exciting part of the game, a number of new factions and rewards have been added for Burning Crusade. The two most notable are the Aldor and Scryer - two competing factions who can both be found in the Outland hub of Shattrath City, and to whom you can only pledge allegiance to one.

Considering the ridiculous influx of people buying Burning Crusade, most servers seem to be holding up extremely well. For the first time in a while, many servers are seeing queues and wait times to log in, but reports of crashing seem to be minimal. In some cases, character creation has temporarily been disabled on certain servers, so if you're buying Burning Crusade with the intention of playing with friends, you may want to check that you'll be able to get up and running on the server of your choice. Blizzard is also temporarily allowing free transfers to some servers, so if you're looking to make a jump, this is a pretty good time to do so.

The Final Word

With all we've seen of Burning Crusade so far, it's hard not to feel that we've just scratched the surface of the expansion. It won't be long before we start seeing level 70 Draenei and Blood Elves, before we start digging through all the post-70 content and raids, before the initial leveling madness ends and the PvP events become more popular. But we've seen more than enough to know: if you played World of Warcraft to level 60 and enjoyed it, you'll enjoy Burning Crusade even more. And if you never stopped playing WoW, the expansion isn't an option, it's mandatory. Don't feel bad if you're still addicted: we expect to be right next to you for many months to come.