World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade

Blizzard speaks! New info on PvP, honor, flying mounts, and more in this close look at the must-play MMO expansion, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade.

Looking back a few years, it's almost impossible to believe that some cynical industry types were claiming that the MMO market was saturated; that everyone who wanted to play an MMO already, you know, was. Fat chance. World of Warcraft has blown the doors off of everyone's expectations (except perhaps for Blizzard's). And despite its almost overwhelming success, it's still a work-in-progress: its first expansion pack, The Burning Crusade, is not expected to see the light of day until the end of 2006.

But that doesn't mean that Blizzard is keeping quiet. In fact, The Burning Crusade got its first walk down the runway in October 2005, which will make it over 12 months between public unveiling and projected retail release -- practically a full development cycle for your average console game. Such lengthy development times are highly unusual for mere expansion packs... But then again, Blizzard is famous for taking its time. Just recently, we got a chance to look at what they've been cooking up behind the scenes with The Burning Crusade.

As you've probably heard by now, The Burning Crusade adds a new zone: the Outlands. And the Outlands aren't just some gloomy new dungeon, but a whole new game zone that WoW designer Tom Chilton estimates to be about half the size of Kalimdor alone. Even though it's split into seven zones, it's a pretty hefty slice of real estate, and Blizzard plans to implement the new world PvP in the majority of its zones. The Burning Crusade also adds two new races: the Blood Elves on the Horde side and the Draenei on the Alliance side. Interestingly, the Blood Elves will not have a Warrior class. The Draenei will not have Rogues, but this isn't a surprise since they're physically similar to the Tauren, another Rogue-less class.

Perhaps to offset the Blood Elves' lack of a pure melee combat class, Chilton says Blizzard is going to be giving Paladins more defensive capabilities, namely a "snap aggro" tool like the Warrior's taunt ability. The plan is to shift the Paladin more towards tanking and defense and the Shaman more towards big damage offense attacks. The Shaman class will also be getting a new skill, Bloodlust, and its properties (for now) will boost spell damage and physical attack power for 60 seconds, with a ten-minute cooldown. Chilton didn't specify what the exact DPS (damage-per-second) increase would be.

Warlocks should also be pleased to hear that the de-buff slot limit will be raised from 16 to "somewhere in the 20s." Since the previous move was from 8 to 16, it's a safe bet that the new limit will be 24, but Chilton wouldn't give an exact number yet. And speaking of raids, there will be no 40-man instances in the expansion dungeons, as The Burning Crusade is currently focused on slightly more intimate 10-man and 25-man raids. The currently implemented 40-man dungeons will remain as-is.

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