How did The Burning Crusade Change World of Warcraft?

hello ladies and gentlemen Willie here it had been just over six months since the dread Citadel naxxramas had opened in vanilla world of warcraft' pouring the forces of the scourge across Azeroth many had tried and failed to quell the vile and dare to the rumor the whisper of a new expansion kept eyes on the horizon eagerly anticipating more information more news anything about what on earth comes neck and players didn't have to wait too long before that news came on the 9th of January 2007 the dark portal opened for the first time and on the 16th of January 2007 the most popular MMORPG to ever exist launched its first expansion the Burning Crusade leading players totally off Azeroth on to an entirely new world Outland a world far more focused on an alien setting for once we were not waiting to be attacked on our homeworld we were taking the fight back to them the hype levels were unreal for this moment to come vanilla had lasted a little over two years in length two years of tuning perfecting and building a community around this game this was a time when attitudes to gaming culture were so different it was weird nerdy and usual and it was brilliant 2007 of course was still in the era of hard copies of games making opening events for new expansions becoming nerd nests overnight thousands of Azeroth Ian's work on great to share a love for a game that brought people together online all over the world now in real time and looking back it's hard not to wish this was still more of a thing compared to our seamless digital rollouts that we've become so accustomed to the preparation was done the game BOTS installed updated your character was ready gear repaired food and water in the inventory gold at hand your body was ready curtains shut junk food and energy drink ready to go valiantly you ran through the Blasted Lands toured that towering green portal ready also ready to take that first step the first taste of the next thousand hours to come and nothing you run into the wall behind the portal and then you disconnected repeatedly and that's if you are on a PvE server if you're on a PvP server you did the same as the above after running back to your corpse several dozen times it turns out sending every single player in the game to the exact same point to load through a portal at the exact same time had some rather negative bottleneck effects you would have thought the opening of a queue would have provided some information on that maybe Blizzard just underestimated the playerbase once again or maybe it wasn't even possible with technology back then to release the expansion in this fashion and avoid this bottleneck in any event it certainly made it memorable perhaps for the wrong reasons though and you may think Blizzard would learn something from doing launches like this and you would be right until they sort of forgot this happened and did the exact same thing later on but managed to make it even worse but anyways we're finally through that portal onto our brand new world what did this world offer content content galore new challenges new abilities new did you just see that guy flying ok this is gonna be pretty awesome let's talk about what the Burning Crusade brought to the World of Warcraft series upon landing in Outland initially players may have thought how will this continent lust us for the next few years it is after all a major downgrade in size from calendar and the eastern kingdoms that totaled around 40 zones collectively Outland by itself has seven but sometimes the less can be more zone design was more full and fleshed out the advent of quest hubs had really grown into the game each zone had a few areas requests were picked up on mass where is infinite there was only a selection of places like this such as beautybay thorium point or Marshalls refuge gone with a daze of finding quests where an NPC in under city will just ask you casually to pop over to get mushroom for block mowed down or somewhere incredibly remote and inconvenient Outland was much more linear in its approach the developers didn't expect you to hop frequently between different zones but progress from one to the next Hellfire Peninsula led to xanga mosh which led to Terra car forest in a grand and so on and each zone really stood out from one another they kind of had 240 sounds in vanilla is great for a making an epic world you need to plan your journeys it feels like you're embarking on something like when you make that first trip down stranglethorn vale or on the journey through wetlands to get to Ironforge but there's just a lot of nothing a lot of filler space where not a lot happens kind of like real life with seven zones to play through in the Burning Crusade this wasn't nearly as much the case comparatively the world is packed nearly every zone has multiple instances or raids in it each zone is immediately distinguishable the atmospheric effects the skyboxes colors all changing from one area to the next like night and day the era dread of hellfire peninsula remember this noise before a swift reservoir at all the boggy greens and purples of xanga marsh over to the green and vibrant fields of Nagrand to the stricken and desolate shadowmoon valley some zones even going as far as to really promote a new feature of the expansion in flying and some key farming spots quest hubs or even raves needed this skill to access for yourself the terrain was used to fit the new content and don't worry we're going to be talking more about flying later you compel map on this new world we found ourselves with two new races on for the Horde and one for the Alliance the blood elves and the Dre brand why does everyone have trouble with the name of our people it sounds just like it is spelled yeah yeah those guys for once the Horde got race that didn't have back issues and the Alliance got one that was more than four feet tall that's a twin why not say you know there wasn't any race change functionality for Blizzard back during TBC and if we were to get TBC following classic who's thinking this technology may suddenly be made available race changing through the shop wasn't a thing till mid wrath of the lich king even still I think the main attraction of these new races is the fact that faction specific classes were now gone something got lost true and vanillish or blizzard did however try to keep some semblance of a difference between the two factions by giving them different spells poured shame and got bloodlust and Alliance got heroism they both do the same thing here one is red because horde are red and angry the other is some floaty hammer thingy Alliance paladin's got sail of vengeance which is a stacking damage over time effect horde paladin's got seal of blood which dealt damage to yourself to increase your damage basically guess what sealer blood is way better to the point of retribution on horde is pretty good retribution on alliance is good for raid buffs some private servers have even given scene or blood to Alliance retribution paladin's as it's such a big imbalance between the two factions it very much is what it is I'm afraid not only this but we had a new profession enter the game and honestly one that feels so core to the game you could have almost sworn it was part of vanilla jewelcrafting adding a new level of intricacy to completing your ideal item set and your crafting certainly went a long way to completing those hit an expertise cap what's expertise you ask a new stat expertise rating which reduce the chance of enemy would dodge your parry an attack however it wasn't a percentage anymore as it was in vanilla it had a number a number that could be changed by gear stats tanks gems ratio bonuses procs and the enemy level all in all it's something that changes for pretty much every class all the time it's just a number you need to keep in mind a bit just like hit champs and as we leveled up our characters got access to new abilities many even got a brand new ability every two levels as well as extra ranks of their core spells some of the abilities brought in by TBC at is a level of skill and gameplay they set you apart from using them correctly here's just a few additions spell steel for mages cloaca shadows for rogues terrorism for Sharman spell reflect for warriors not only that every single talent tree in the game got a new end talent at 40 points mutilate for assassination ropes unstable affliction for affliction warlocks totem of raft for elemental shaman someone water elemental for frost mages the list goes on and on and pretty much every single class got something awesome and fresh and you know what the best bit about all this is classes were just that little bit more balanced than they were in vanilla it wasn't just the case if you run up against X class you're going to die every single time sure let's not get too rose-tinted here major roads are still absolute monsters in 1v1 z-- warriors destroying groups but specializations like Shadow Priests enhancement shamans bounce druids can actually play the game without running out of mana in about 20 seconds healers started working their way into their niches paladin's as tank healers shaman is incredibly strong group and rain healers as were priests and druids a little bit of a mix of both and Blizzard implemented many group or raid wide buffs to many specializations to make them more of an attractive option to bring along to your raid gone were the days of certain specs being a full meme retribution gained improved steal of the Crusader increasing the chance the target will be critically hit by 3% shadow priests game vampiric touch giving your group a very strong manner regeneration buff enhancement got unleash rage buffing your party's attack power by 10% moon Canora was buffed to 5% I could go on and on and all this new power was put to good use through the endgame content of which there was an absolute load now let's talk raids first of all let's address the downsizing rate in vanilla were for Team an epic affair sure but more an exercise for the most part in coordination and prepper than anything else in the Burning Crusade carosone was ten man and every of a raid was 25 in fact not to go into this in too much detail again here I've actually done a video on why I think Blizzard downscaled raids also that pesky debuff cap was raised to 40 making it more of an attractive option to bring a wide variety of classes to help your raid out the debuff cap wasn't fully dropped until rattler Lich King and we ended vanilla on max ramus a Shia wallop aimed for many guilds naxxramas wasn't just a step up from a queue it was an escalator from the 1st of the 30th floor many girls who even saw the inside of the place maybe only cleared 3 or 4 bosses in the easier quarters the military and const recorders having far too big of a barrier to entry in rhizobia sand patchwork in the Burning Crusade we had a whole lot of raids Kara's an arguably one of the most memorable ones ever for me just how creative it was no longer were we in some dungeon or dark dank halls this was a majestic tower clinging on to a past 3rd along surpassed it a truly magical place in fact carosone was later reused in Legion as a two-part dungeon buses like murrow's the curator opera event chess all ending in a battle against an arid our Lord we had small rates to the likes of Meg Sheridan's lair and ruler and then the likes of tempest keep ashes of allah the infamous calif as five of its role play serpent rank cabin lady vash the lurker below black temple the reliquary of souls terran what button do i press here guys gore fiend Illidan Stormrage these bosses weren't just big dumb dragons that if you over I grow one shot your raid mechanics were introduced to encourage responsibility positioning cooldown usage core elements of raiding moving forwards into the game once again we ended on a difficulty spike the Sun weld was unrelenting few raids even got past the first three of Kalecgos brutalus and fell missed only to find the arid are twins waiting as well as one of the tightest dps checks efforts you have existed in marui or pretty much every raid member would go leatherworking to get drums of fury to rotate the buff for the whole fight and finally we ended on kil Jaeden himself but you didn't just walk into most of these raids oh no you thought a to mincing classic took a while think again let's go and get you into Cara's on shall we you will need to do the following we've got three introductory quests then we'll need to do Manitou method called shadow labyrinth steenbok Botanica mekin architraves old Hills Bradford hills and the black grass dungeons before being attuned that's just the charism by the way here's a nice simple graph of the different achievements in the Burning Crusade you know I like about this your main matters when you log in the chance you have something to work towards is very high and you can put time into that one class and if you're a real madman you can do it all again on an old one dungeon elites the next everything adds up reputations matter heroic dungeons matter raids lead to raid it's all one big ladder up to the top and it's a system that keeps you going and going but PvE wasn't the only end game that had grown we got a new battleground as well I have the storm which sort of reminds me as if Warsong Gulch and arathi basin had a baby having elements of both capturing points and flight carrying have strong memories of priests and mages flying down with slow fall to the flag in the center and warriors happily running off losing half their health and then complaining about no heals but the real highlight of PvP and TBC were Riina's a new far more competition and driven former PvP back then there were no rates of battlegrounds sure you could pre-made but most of the time you actively don't want to go against of a pre-made to make sure honor games gear was still farmable and it was still very good remember arena was the fire where PvP legends were forged 2v2 3v3 and 5v5 s this is a place where people who wanted to PvP could PvP the ranking an honor system from vanilla was set on fire and thrown into a bin which was then set on fire and thrown into a bigger bin which was then buried and then set on fire TBC introduced a new system do pvp get honor spend it on gear the most casual or most hardcore guys had the same access to the same gear the guys at the top didn't just get to the top because they ran down to dreck far for 12 hours a day or because they could semi afk in battlegrounds for mumps they got to the top because they were good they were really good meta comps will always be better in any game sure but it gives you a chance to shine as an individual player and ever since arenas have been a thing they have always been the biggest indicator of who is the best and there's a big reason wife about with all that said and done let's look at some of the things that have not been as positively received well maybe not necessarily at the time of TBC but certainly looking back TBC introduced in gameplay elements and mechanics which have been widely criticized moving forwards the Oh tell if I don't like instantly replacing my epics with quest greens now personally I don't mind a jump up in the items it happens once every few years in this era instead of every few months that it currently doesn't retail but I'm not really all aboard that I'm replacing my epic strain let's look at some of the quests in Outland and compare it to what my warlock is wearing today I have that as your song mage blade and the exalted book from AV a nice combo going into black wingler a KA content from the start of the game now let's find the quest in TBC where I would replace these items spoiler there is no quest in hellfire peninsula that would upgrade my items or xanga mash we do have a candidate for a main town replacement in Terra cough forest this from a level 65 early quest and a definite upgrade from level 66 elite quest in it in there and now a Chaisson mage blade is a molten core item it's a really good one but it's a molten core item maybe I picked a bad slot to review but looking over quest there are plenty of weapons being given out if I have to wait till I complete halfway through Negron for an upgrade for a molten core epic I'd say that's some pretty good mileage from that item to be honest and if you're in knox gear considering your TSS and enchants you're probably going to be using it right up to 70 we start getting gear with multiple gem slots so I don't really get this argument too much personally the Burning Crusade brought daily quests into the game sure there's something like then classic but those are more repeatable rather than daily so you can just do them as much as you want however in TBC and reputation dailies the Alec Weldon ass eventually you can see it is the start much to come in terms of daily craft and I think you can only have a negative opinion in retrospect however generally speaking more if the content was by and large seen as a good thing back then especially when it ended in epic rewards like the nether Drake's from the nether wing faction or never rain outs from the sheet re sky guard on top of this the sheer amount content locked behind reputations quest games and dungeons was massive heroic dungeon keys rates achievements weeks of doing the same daily quests this could be somewhat of a gripe seeing as it's much of the same content again and again and just as often the rewards for Habra and a highly sought after the achievements could also be seen as a bit excessive and discouraging for anybody rolling alts but at the same time if there's so much to do on your main account wouldn't it be better on that and going for an alt superfast there was also the sheer difficulty jumped from normal to heroic dungeons normal being reasonably chill for the most part depends on the dungeon designed for leveling players largely heroic though oh boy new mechanics severely beef that mob she needed CCU absolutely had to bring CC sometimes you would have a pack of 5 mobs and would need to CC four of them this did limit who exactly you could bring along to dungeons as well I remember doing many many runs of Magisters terrace on my Shadow Priests after that trinket from the third boss of my role was to literally just mind-control mobs doing this would do far more damage to help my group than I could ever do individually the step up was worth the reward though with bosses adding epics that are loot tables and blizzard testing just how far they could push PvE content for the hardcore bow players which finally brings us to flying yes this can of worms talking about this is like LFR everyone's already made up their mind at this point and I think it could be incredibly polarizing keep in mind though at this time flying was pretty amazing you may think that in expansions to come its harm the game in various ways and we can talk about it more when we get to that point in the series but in the Burning Crusade it was overall pretty well received in fact the real gripe of it back then was just the cost at the top and for epic flying regular flying was hardly gonna break the bank from any players the way writing skill was bought changed into the Burning Crusade as well no longer was the skilled cheap and the mounts expensive but the other way around regular flying being 800 gold and amount 100 gold this was 60% both land and airspeed epic flying though was seriously expensive the mount was 200 gold and the training was an enormous 5,000 gold these mounts were 100 percent ground speed and 280 percent air speed making it a badge of prestige for a player to have earned that sum of money let's cover the criticism though you hear these days quickly killed world PvP for the cost of 900 gold you become near and callable as soon as you hop on that mount most classes can no longer touch you you can fly straight to instance entrances without having to fight your way they're outnumbered fly away want to grieve someone who doesn't have flying it's very very easy to do I think many people have soured a bit towards the idea of world PvP since phase 2 in classic to be honest however good it may have been back in vanilla I don't think you can argue it didn't make it fully impact people's ability to naturally interact with others secondly it made the world seem smaller getting around with so much faster you no longer needed to interact with the world around you as you zoom past everything to get to where you want to be get straight to that herb or mining node across bodies of water and so on this was the biggest convenience factor Blizzard had ever introduced to the game it made so much in the open world easier and there was even content where it was required from quests farming spots and raids like sketches the abyssal shelf and tempest key there is good and bad in flying honestly I don't really mind our never been fussed in recent expansions when we start with only ground mounts before progressing to the flying later on don't get me wrong I've seen those issues but it's just a case of it is well it is for me I'm actually running a large discussion on this topic I know it's so dividing so this is a very condensed down version here we will likely give this a bigger luck layer on down the line all in all the Burning Crusade were a massive amount of the game much needed balanced more full classes expanding the endgame new difficulty levels it was overall an enormous success for Blizzard and the player base went pretty wild for it the Burning Crusade was near the peak of World of Warcraft subscriber count and was only ever surpassed by one expansion and that would be the one to follow it how complicit go from strength to strength in this fashion well we'll look at that next time as we find out what did raff or the Lich King bring to the World of Warcraft series these retrospectives are very interesting trip down memory lane for me sometimes I'm surprised at how much comes back once you give it some thought anyways that will do it for this episode I'll see you guys in the next one if you like what you see give the video a like and subscribe as there's plenty more to come as always thank you all so much for watching take care bye [Music]

Channel: WillE

Views: 428,438

Rating: 4.8969278 out of 5

Keywords: tbc, phase 4, zg, zul'gurub, arathi basin, Blackwing Lair, BWL, top 10 wow, epic mount, grind, wow, gold, gold guide, best farm vanilla, World of Warcraft, WoW Classic, classic, Vanilla, shadowlands, asmongold, madseasonshow, pvp, pve, raiding, azerite traits, classic wow beta, blizzard, twitch, mage, rogue, shaman, warrior, paladin, hunter, druid, warlock, priest, ion hazzikostas, 8.3

Id: Z3IYUs5Hv1M

Length: 19min 36sec (1176 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 17 2020