World of Warcraft’s first expansion, “The Burning Crusade,” introduced two new races (Draenei for Alliance, and Blood Elf for Horde), an entire new continent, and a host of other changes and content. Players could now fly around the world of Outland, items were now socketed like the Diablo series, and the level cap was raised from 60 to 70. The number of players required to fight raid encounters was also lowered from 40 to 25, and even two 10-man raids were introduced: Karazhan and Zul’Aman.
The lore for this expansion was centered mainly on Illidan Stormrage, Kael’thas Sunstrider, and Kil’jaeden each of which were raid bosses. It essentially picked up where Warcraft 3 left off in the lore department, branching away from the Old Gods and Dragonflights.
Blizzard addressed the many issues that players had with certain classes. Certain talent specializations were worthless, some were too powerful, and often times most classes were pigeon-holed into one role. For example, before The Burning Crusade, Druids could only be healers. Even though there were both tanking and DPS trees, they were unbalanced and poorly designed. The class changed in The Burning Crusade made it possible for a class to shine in more than one specialization.
Long time Warcraft fans were really delighted at the return of classic lore, and long time WoW players were happy to see the game balanced better, and many glaring issues addressed. There were still several problems with this expansion, and players immediately voiced these complaints. Reputation farming was a necessity and unanimously voted as not fun, dungeons were still long and loaded with trash, and the quests still felt a little to close to a grind. Blizzard took on these issues for their next expansion, “Wrath of the Lich King” along with others like art direction, soundtrack, and graphics updates.
