G’day guys.

This review is brought to you by the guys at Gamehead, sponsors of the wonderful folks at TekTime Radio.

Today I will be reviewing Blizzards new expansion for their rudely popular game, World of Warcraft. The expansion is titled “World of Warcraft, The Burning Crusade” and is so named because of the devastating war Sargeras and his army of demons and infernals have declared on the population of Azeroth. The game takes explorers (those game enough, anyway) into the unchartered realms of a place called the outlands, with new monsters to best, new challenges to indulge and new levels to achieve.

The expansion pack, released in Australia on the 16th of January, in what was somewhat of an event, where EB stores across Australia opened at midnight in order to release the pasty white scores of people who had awaited for months for the fantastic game from the vice grip of anticipation, the more arborous of them had ordered the collector’s edition which entitled them to many fun things, including a sound track and a free in game pet.

Being an expansion, the original must be bought before you can play the Burning Crusade but that’s ok, because if you are that keen to get Burning Crusade, World of Warcraft should already be in your possession, and if not, it can be for the measly price of around $30 dollars (available from all good retailers), and to pick up The Burning Crusade will cost you between 40 and 60 dollars, with the additional monthly cost that World of Warcraft has always required still being present at around 20 dollars (players can expect to pay exactly the same per month whether they have Burning Crusade installed or not). Rated at T for Teen (so are the majority of its players, or at least their mental capabilities) The Burning Crusade isn’t shying away from the use of Blood, Suggestive Themes, Alcohol (I mean really, haven’t we all, at some point in our lives, wished we could become virtually legless?) and violence (you know it has to be fun).

Not being a beast of a game, the only really arduous work your computer will have to endure when you play World of Warcraft and The Burning Crusade, is your fits of swearing and possible abuse as you are repeatedly killed by the opposition. Oh, well that and when you are loading a new city, or undergoing a new battle, or going into a new area or looking at a lovely piece of scenery, for all that stuff you will need a machine that holds within it at least 512 meg of ram (I will say this a lot throughout this section of the review, but, it says 512 on the box, I play with 2 gig and I still sometimes wish I had more, but I’m pedantic. 1gig would be ideal), a processor (intel or AMD, or for you non-conformists, any other brand) that has at least 800mHZ of powers (IE the Intel Pentium3 or AMD Athlon ). You are also going to need a graphics card that possesses 32 meg of graphical ram at least (IE NVIDIA GeForce class 2 cards and above), but I play with an Nvidia 6600GT with 128meg of ram, and whilst I have most settings cranked to near full capacity, it still runs.. not as perfectly as i may wish sometimes, I would recommend at least 64meg of graphical ram. To hear the stunning score, and to enjoy the warm fuzzy feeling you get when you cleave a monster in the face, and it squeaks back, you are going to want a DirectX compatible sound card too (and the volume up nice and high).

Not only will you find the new territories of outlands in the expansion, you will find 2 new races, the horde’s new Blood Elf race, a physically stunning race that look similar to night elves, and the alliance’s draenei, that look somewhat less stunning, and somewhat more... hippopotamus like, but perhaps, as many would agree, more frightening (unless you find getting attacked by a super modelesque character frightening, that is). These 2 new races boast visually embracing, and fantastic new starting areas, where obviously Blizzard have spent a lot of time to really maximise that “wow” factor you get when you log in. Other new content includes the new jewelcrafting profession, which enhances the depth and customisation of your character by allowing players to add gems to certain items of clothing to enhance their stats. Those of you unfortunate enough to have WoW, but not The Burning Crusade are missing out on all of this exciting new content, you wont be able to level past level 60, nor will you be able to become a jewelcrafter, or a Blood Elf, or a hippo..Draenei, nor can you join the rest of us as we frolic through the outlands, making daisy chains and destroying the warlords of Sargeras’s army. However, if the reason you weren’t getting Burning Crusade was because you anticipated the game play would change in anyway then you are in luck! (I know that’s why you don’t have it).

The game play remains the same, except of course, we have new content which means, more game to play! There has been, however, some slight tweaks to the mechanics in some parts of the game that those of you with or without Burning Crusade will have noticed. Where an item used to have, for instance, an added 1% chance to land a critical strike, the item will now have a “critical strike rating”, and a certain number of those points (it changes at each level) will equal 1% chance to critical strike (to the best of my knowledge, at level 70 you need 21 critical strike rating points to increase your chance to land a critical strike by 1%).

Blizzard have also given players an extra way to make instances harder for ourselves (yay! More difficult!), that is with the addition of “Heroic” instances. These are the same as normal instances, except require players to complete additional challenges outside of the instance to be allowed the chance to enter a heroic instance, upon entering a player and their group of battle hardened companions will find themselves met with higher level opponents than those in the normal instances, this means their foe’s will hit harder, and take more hits to fall. But don’t be dispirited, it isn’t all pain and no gain, should your group have the skill and wit to fell these mighty foes, you will be rewarded to a greater extent than your normal instancing counterparts, you will be rewarded with better items, you know the kind, the ones that hit harder, faster and give us, hopefully, some of those critical strike rating points we talked about earlier.

Players without the Burning Crusade won’t have to worry about their friends with the Burning Crusade leaving them, as Blizzard at this point in time have expressed no concern, interest or contemplation of “Burning Crusade only realms”, so we can all still hold hands and make friends, until those of us with the Crusade go to the Blasted Lands, and walk through the awe inspiring dark portal.

Overall I would give the Burning Crusade a big two thumbs up, if you didn’t like original WoW, you won’t like this. But for the 8.5 million of us who did like the original WoW, we are all (or most of us) loving the Burning Crusade. And we want you to come and join us. Personally I’m finding my blood elf warlock a lot of fun to level up, and I’m enjoying jewel crafting, and I LOVED the Blood Elf starting area. However you couldn’t pay me enough gold to create a draeneipotamus. But that’s just me.

Hope you guys had as much fun reading this as I did writing it, and are inspired to jump out of your seats (for perhaps the first time today), sprint down to the shops and snatch your own copy of The Burning Crusade (remember to pay for it upon leaving, I take no responsibility for criminal acts committed as a consequence of reading this review). For the more reserved of you, if you want to know more, head on over to Blizzards comprehendible, comprehensive, companion of a compendium in the form of a website: www.worldofwarcraft.com.

See you on the battle field.