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The Burning Crusade: Review January 29, 2007 Jakub Wojnarowicz |
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Summary: It's here, it's reviewed, Illidan doesn't think you're ready. We say we want our tier 6.
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 6 ) |
As we mentioned in our TBC preview, the newbie zones are truly excellent. They surpass the two best start options, Elwynn Forest and Tirisfal Glades rather handily, and their follow-ups, Ghostlands and Bloodmyst Isle, are far, far better than original early zones like Barrens, Loch Modan, or Westfall. Quests are more concise, with less mindless running around and more action. There are fewer bottlenecks and no occasions where a player finds himself starved for a key mob or is looking for frustratingly rare drops. Generally speaking, if you start a Blood Elf or Draenei toon, you will find yourself doing more, shorter quests and next-to-zero grinding. The path to level 18-20 or so is ridiculously well-planned and if anything having to go to Redridge Mountains, Ashenvale, or Stonetalon Mountains will be a bit of a shock as you notice the quality drop off between expansion and original content.
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Players continuing their level 60 characters will be warmly surprised, however. Outland is a magnificent example of questing and design. Though some zones, like Blade’s Edge Mountains or Hellfire Peninsula aren’t particularly attractive, all of them are well-designed with incredible question progression. Quest stacking, once an art that spawned numerous leveling guides, now comes naturally with every zone. The endless FedEx quests of the level 50s, flipping between Western Plaguelands, Eastern Plaguelands, Winterspring, Azshara, and Silithus is but a distant memory. Almost every quest in Outland is completed in the zone it’s started in, and usually there are two or three other quests that take you to the same area. It’s really as simple as collecting all the quests, doing them, turning them in, and then doing their follow-ups. The designers have chosen to go with quest chains for the most part, there are few stand-alones, and the chains range from moderate to long in length. In some wonderful cases, like the continued adventures of the Nesingwary Expedition, the chains themselves stack as you progress into different areas.
Loot drops are remarkable for the first few levels of Outland. Players stuck in mixed green and blue gear, or even tier 0 from 10-mans will be pleasantly surprised by the incredible quality of drops Outland has to offer. Molten Core-quality gear is usually completely gone by level 62, even considering set bonuses. Blackwing Lair goods disappear a few levels after that, and even the prized Naxx gear will be oudated for the most part before you hit 70. That’s not to say that raid epics won’t serve you well, because for the most part those to hit 70 fastest were wearing very good gear at the outset and didn’t have to bother with the early instances. After level 62 or so, players will notice that loot drops have tapered off in progression and there won’t be as dramatic an improvement from level to level, though still better than it was in vanilla WoW. To give you an idea of how dramatic the improvement is, my Rogue had ~3500hp in mixed greens and blues before The Dark Portal opened. By the time level 61 hit, he was over 5000hp. Now, having just hit 66 and not seen an instance since Underbog, he’s at 5700hp and could be at about 6500 if I sacrificed my fetish for +hit and +crit items for more stamina boosts.
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The reason for the good gear drops is because players need to be on relatively equal footing as they progress through the game. It would be impossible to keep Naxx players challenged if the early zones like Zangarmarsh or Hellfire Peninsula were also to be playable by those who hadn’t gone raiding or done many instances at level 60.
| Speaking of instances | Page:: ( 2 / 6 ) |
Blizzard has also dropped the 40-man raid instance. Whether it’s to take mercy on smaller guilds or for performance reasons, the 40-man has now been replaced by the 25-man raid. The old 40-mans like Molten Core, Naxx, and BWL are still out there, but all new raid content is targeted at 25 players. Perhaps the popularity of AQ20 and Zul’Garrak has something to do with it. While we haven’t been raiding yet, we do expect to see Blizzard continue improving the complexity and diversity of raid instances. The relative simplicity of Molten Core gave way to a few tricks in Blackwing Lair, and then Blizzard really caught its stride in the later parts of Ahn’Qiraj and of course Naxx. To expect less in Outland doesn’t seem fair.
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The 25-man instances range from very short (like Magtheridon’s Lair in Hellfire Peninsula) to being very large and long, according to Blizzard. Magtheridon has been described as the new Onyxia, in fact.
Items have been added to or modified in older instances as well. With patch 1.20, thrown weapons no longer come in stacks of white items, but can have quality ranging from green to epic purple as well. Rather than being used like a stack, it comes with 200 durability and loses one durability with each toss. Alliance loot tables have included Shaman gear for a few weeks since TBC, and of course Horde have had access to Paladin gear. This was done prematurely by Blizzard and resulted in many useless drops in all instances, ranging from Scholomance and Stratholme up to Naxxramas. As unamusing as it was to find a Shaman item in Scholo, we can scarcely imagine the annoyance of a 40-man raid that worked hours to see bind on pickup items that they couldn’t possibly use. Whether through carelessness or laziness, it’s hard to forgive Blizzard this oversight.
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Also new is the option to run some Outland dungeons in regular or Heroic mode. Heroic mode increases the difficulty considerably (normalized to level 70) but also the quality of the drops. Players can expect epic loot to drop much more often. It has been suggested that Heroic 5-mans will be able to drop loot similar to some of the early 25-man instances. If true, it’s yet another indication that Blizzard doesn’t want to see players without huge guilds left behind.
| PvP, Zones, Economy, Bad Things | Page:: ( 3 / 6 ) |
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Playing on a PvP server, one would expect ganking to be commonplace but it is not as prevalent as you’d assume. Most players respect each other and understand that a reputation as a ganker is not conducive to leveling quickly. Even once they reach 70, Horde players generally have not interfered since they’re typically busy doing an instance or grinding reputation to enter raids.
For a game that’s supposedly balanced around PvE rather than PvP, World of WarCraft handles both rather well. There are matchups that aren’t especially favorable to certain classes, like Rogue vs Hunter or Mage vs Warlock, but in general each class can typically compete with a few others and dominate one or more if specced and played correctly. The new 41-point talents have played some havoc with class balance, but things have generally sorted themselves out. Rogues and Warlocks typically pose the biggest problem, since a Rogue out of stealth is usually dead meat and in stealth he’s a killer, while Warlocks are difficult to balance due to efficiency concerns over their damage over time spells in PvE and variety of pets.
Gold is very, very abundant in The Burning Crusade. Players new to 60 in TBC usually have epic mounts by the time they’re halfway through level 61 in Outland. Money sink trades like Engineering and Enchanting haven’t quite been made lucrative, but generally less expensive. The standard skinning/herbalism or skinning/mining option is still best for money making, but not as necessary for new toons as before. The abundance of gold should lead to inflation, especially for twink and high-end items, which may make things difficult for those who haven’t opted to buy the expansion pack.
Patch 1.20 absolutely destroyed all sorts of game and interface mods. Nurfed UI, a popular option in 1.12, still hasn’t quite recovered from the drastic changes Blizzard made though it can do some really cool things now that it couldn’t before. Other mods like decursive are totally gimped and force more labor on healers and casters. To make matters worse, the little patches and hot fixes have often interfered with even the smallest modifications like Chronometer or FuBar. It’s become very tedious trying to keep everything up-to-date.
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The very refined experience TBC offers actually makes the leveling of alt characters somewhat painful. Going back to the (by comparison) uneven vanilla experience requires a considerable change of expectations after being in Outland. Moreover, it’s actually somewhat too refined if anything. In six levels of Outland, the least likeable quest I can think of is collecting Spore Bat Eyes and Fen Strider Tentacles, and that’s only because the drop rate is a bit uneven and the Striders and Bats aren’t densely concentrated. Plus, the first time through that quest, it wasn’t clear that Marsh Walkers and Greater Spore Bats, despite being the same core type, aren’t going to drop what I need. Compared to the menagerie of bad quests available in vanilla WoW, it’s rather easy to lose perspective.
| Ballistics Report | Page:: ( 4 / 6 ) |
Pros
Amazing new zones
Large, good mobs, great gear, TONS of quests. This goes for all four newbie zones and the seven in Outland.
Quests
The quests are generally brief, they stack together, the rewards are great and they chain nicely. What more could you ask?
Gear
All you need to know is that within 5-6 levels you will probably begin to replace even the best gear available vanilla WoW, at least if you do instances in Outland. And those levels come fast!
Quality Control
Bugs, performance, and gameplay issues are almost non-existent. Only once have I had to open a ticket, and that was for a stuck quest giver mob.
Graphics
The cartoon graphics of WoW were never bewildering but they weren’t meant to, they are designed to last the test of time. It is the style that matters and it is as valid today as it was two years ago.
Instances
For the most part short, simple, and enjoyable, the instances in TBC will make you cringe at the thought of ever having to do Gnomeregan, Sunken Temple, or even Dead Mines ever again.
Cons
1.20 drops before TBC
Blizzard for some reason decided to drop Shaman gear for the Alliance and Paladin gear for the Horde before each faction had its respective class unlocked. This wasn’t fair to casual players, never mind raiders.
Mod issues
For reasons that we can’t quite accept, the scripts and code was revised to disable many interface features. Much of this functionality has yet to return and never may. Moreover, the changes in subsequent update patches have made it difficult to keep mods up to date after months of stability in 1.19.
Uneven leveling
If you start a Draenei or Blood Elf toon, once you move past those starting areas you have 40 levels of slogging through original content before you get to the good stuff again. Yes, you will notice the difference.
Looking For Group system
The new LFG system isn’t bad, the problem is that no one uses it. To make matters worse, people now spam the Trade channel with LFG requests.
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| Final Verdict | Page:: ( 5 / 6 ) |
What more can we say? It runs well, it’s almost completely bug-free, the servers are good, the game scales mob spawn rates to keep up with demand, the quest log always has something for you to do and the instances are brief and enjoyable. There’s no clearing of crap before you get to the Dead Mines or Maraudon proper, you no longer need to get 40 people together for a raid… it’s not next-generation, but The Burning Crusade is as good as this generation of MMOs is going to get. It’s hard to fathom how Blizzard plans on improving matters in their next expansion.
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The floods is threat’ning
My very life today
| Gallery | Page:: ( 6 / 6 ) |