The entrance of one of the new instances in The Burning Crusade
Recently, I decided to reinstall WoW and download the expansion since I was given a free 10 day trial for The Burning Crusade. I only planned to devote only a day of gaming to it, so feel free to read up on what I experienced if you are curious about the trial. There wasn’t much point in spending more since the trial capped it so I could not level to 61. So what did I experience in my short time with the first World of Warcraft expansion?
It was weird to enter the game again, as I wasn’t sure what was going on. I appeared in Ironforge, and surprisingly, it was pretty empty. Granted, it was early in the morning, but I also assumed that most players were probably in Outland and not spending their time in Ironforge any longer.
My talents were all reset, so I went ahead and tried going full fire tree for my mage to check out the new talents. After walking through the portal in the Blasted Lands, the quests began. The quests were pretty simple, and by the time lunchtime rolled around, I was already halfway to 61. I was actually not a fan of the Outland world – it was pretty deserted and devoid of interesting structures or wildlife.
It felt weird getting green and blue quest rewards and comparing them to my epics to see which one was better. Somehow, part of me didn’t want to give up all those epics that I had earned when I was 60 but I knew that they were all worthless now. What a waste…
I decided that afternoon that I also wanted to try out one of the new instances to see how it was, so I found a group and entered The Blood Furnace, a wing of the Hellfire Citadel. This was a 5-man dungeon recommended for 61-63, but I was a pretty much fully decked out epic 60, so they took me along. It was weird – my party consisted of a warrior, a druid, a paladin, another mage, and myself. What was strange was the paladin was the main healer and the druid tanked in bear form. The warrior was complaining that the druid was now a better tanker, so he told the druid to tank. In the two years or so of playing the game since WoW launched, only a Protection specced Warrior was able to Tank. Now I’m seeing other classes taking it while the Warrior is going DPS? Weird stuff.
The dungeon was relatively short; there were only 3 bosses in there and it took about an hour and a half to clear through. Most mob packs were 2-3 and we got a few adds at times, but for the most part it was typical instance running. One of three blues that dropped from the three bosses I could have used to replace my epic gloves, but they were so similar I let the other mage have them (plus, I didn’t know if I was even going to continue playing after the trial).
Screenshots of the instance bosses:
The first boss we encountered, called “The Maker”
The second boss: a big jellyfish named “Broggok”
Final boss of the dungeon: a dark dwarf named Keli’dan the Breaker
After I finished the dungeon, I didn’t feel any sort of desire to continue playing WoW. It seemed like the same old stuff and way too much of a timesink. I heard one guy in my group say he had run that same dungeon 30 times already since he was looking for a drop. That’s just nuts! I couldn’t imagine spending that much time in WoW anymore, as all of this gear now can only depreciate in value.
Towards the end of the day, I was pretty much right at the spot where I would turn to Level 61, so there wasn’t much more I was interested in doing in the game. I’m glad I decided to try the WoW expansion trial without getting sucked back in, as I can go back to enjoying my 360.
