Okay, so I guess it’s time to fess up and come clean. I bought The Burning Crusade… like a week ago… online and downloaded it directly from Blizzard. Lazy? Possibly, but that’s not the reason I bought it online. I had the game in my hand literally 10 times since it came out, and every time I managed to put it down and walk away. I even reactivated my account to test myself and see how uninterested I was in playing again. Initially it worked.
“This game is friggin’ boring“, I told myself. Case closed.
Then, one night without warning Blizzard’s newly announced online upgrade service crit my wallet for $40. Online purchase really are the worst kind of impulse buy ever devised in our lifetime. “If the only thing I did was click a button, and there’s no box in my hands, did I make a purchase?” That’s what I keep telling myself anyway. I’m not sure that my wife would agree.
After a couple hours of watching TV while the upgrade downloaded and installed, I sat down to a brand new log-in screen and started making the biggest mistake of my life… again. I am a weak man, I will be the first to admit it. Hypocrite? Sure, I busted many a balls of my cohorts who played the game after I ‘quit’ (sorry Jim, no hard feelings… lol?).
Apologies aside, the things you’ve read about this expansion totally revitalizing the game are absolutely true. I immediately started a Blood Elf Mage (this being the only class I never really explored) and started out on a lowbie journey that had all the excitement and wonder of the first night I ever logged into the world of Azeroth. The quests were new, the landscape was different and despite what you may think about Blood Elves , their racial abilities are pretty damn cool (albeit overpowered, soon to be nerfed). I’ve spent many hours already exploring the Blood Elf’s home lands and I can safely say that I’ll be playing this character all the way to 70 (currently 14).
I didn’t really get a long look at the Drenai (the other new race), but I took my Alliance level 60 for a run through their city and found it to be very new age and serene. Lots of crystals and music that sounds vaguely like Tangerine Dream.
But the biggest part of The Burning Crusade is without a doubt, The Outlands. Blizzard has added an entire new continent to the world accessible through the Dark Portal chock full of quests, dungeons and PvP for the 60+ crowd. Never having had the time to become a serious Raider, I pretty much shelved my Level 60 Alliance Druid the shortly after I hit 60 and started over on the Horde side. Now I finally have an excuse to dust this guy off and start kicking ass with a high-level character again.
So far the quests in The Outlands have been the standard fare, kill x of these guys, kill those guys and collect x of those, etc. However, the new world is absolutely amazing in it’s scale and immediately makes you feel like you’ve stepped onto the front lines of a total shit storm. Plus, from what I can tell, the quest rewards for this new area seem to rival what was once considered ‘decent’ gear that required running through the same dungeon 50 times.
The hardest part now is deciding if I want to play my Blood Elf, or level my Druid up to 70. Ah, the decisions we must make as adults… Anyway, I realize I just totally nerded out for a few paragraphs there, but what the hell… it’s the Nerdlog. If I can’t do it here, where can I do it?
I’m an addict, there is no getting around it. I’ll try and be better this time around, getting to sleep by 1 on work nights (not happening tonight), keeping my marriage and daughter a priority, and I promise not to speak about WoW in any social situations… because I know how goddamn ridiculous it sounds at parties.
