The Burning Crusade Episode 1: A New World Of Content | Complete History of WoW

on the 16th of january 2007 players flocked to the blasted lands in anticipation of the dark portal finally opening server communities had defeated everything vanilla had to offer they were veterans of patch 1.12's pvp welfare epics so 10 new levels 10 new talent points and a whole world of adventure lay for them beyond that portal the pre-patch saw high lord cruel launch his invasion of azeroth this was an invasion that actually was our justification for the entire outland journey where we would bring war upon these demons just like we did in warcraft 2 beyond the dark portal now in reality highlord cruel was a world boss he was one with an intense enraged timer though so he wasn't that easy and then you could kill 10 of his demons to earn the tabard of the protector of course we did people earn their tabards and with this invasion defeated it was time for the big event at one minute past midnight the dark portal roared to life a player's launch night experience would then diverge some people went straight through the dark portal but others rolled a new character first though we'll talk about those intrepid outland [Music] pioneers for those who braved the dark portal launch night was a little bit rough you see this was still the era where servers were a single solid community and with everybody nearly wanting to hit level 70 this led to issues issues that would cause blizzard to learn some lessons first the portal led to one single zone hellfire peninsula so at that moment hundreds of players disgorged onto the stairs of destiny with one quest root perfection and this meant that wars raged over every mob attack the hellfire fortification objectives and pretty much everything else in the zone now when you did get an opportunity to take a little breather from the gameplay and actually look around yourself and look up what you saw was breathtaking and this needs to be reinforced blizzard had never produced such a stunning skybox giant moons and pure streams of the twisting nether that initial zone on launch night was incredibly impressive the landscape was alien like nothing on azeroth with hellfire citadel dominating the skyline and then just when you thought you were safe from the fall orcs and the pvp your screen would shake you turn your camera and sure hellfire is not a well-regarded zone today i think that is the case but at the time it left an impression it was something daring bold and new it was unlike anything people had experienced on azeroth before the burning crusade represented a large iteration in the game that had came before it the initial flow of quests was yes slow but overall for a lot of people better and smoother quests were more organized into hubs so when you traveled to a new zone a breadcrumb would take you to the heart of the action hubs usually would have all of the vendors you would need plus an in and while this stuff is all very normal nowadays it was a welcome shift from the extreme travel time of some of vanilla's questing hubs also allowed the quest riders to forge a more consistent narrative throughout the zones you'd begin in hellfire you'd make your way to honor hold or thralmar literal ruins from the second war and immediately you get a sense of how cut off you were next you'd grind your way through some foul orcs learning the first hints that illidan had in fact been experimenting with the blood of the pit lord magtharidon to create his own breed of orc then engaging the forge camps we would learn that the legion still claimed outland as their own side quest hubs then became a way to build out scenes to bulk out the lore so that our introduction to the broken tribes of course the devolved vestiges of the draenei and outland left an impression similarly we met the maghar the last true orcs in outland hiding out in the mountains of hellfire meaning that of course later when we found the maghar city of garidar and nagrand it felt like the next big step in that arc your trip to hellfire would also involve big crystals the fallen arakoa and the ghosts of the second war but eventually you would get your few levels of experience out of hellfire and at about level 62 it was time to move on you descended through thornfang hill and blood red slowly gave way to alien blue you were now in zangermarsh the first hub brought us around umbrafin lake where we killed some evil broken and we discovered that the naga are draining the marsh all something that was part of illidan's grand plan which can be summarized as this he who controls the water controls outland zangar marsh had some great quest hubs like say the sporoguar a faction reputation based on saving these little mushroom people with their to this day rather unique tabert next though you'd be invited to visit the city of shattrath nestled away in the mysterious terracore forest once the center of draenai civilization now of course a ruin the bone wastes would dominate to the south hosting the dead city of ochendon a fascinating dungeon hub that we'll explore later in shattrath a haggard war veteran told us to go to a dal and this was for many people their first interaction with a narrow and its lack of dialogue and calming chime just drove this incredible cosmic mystery they were so weird and different who the hell were these narrow people ask themselves many questions luckily khadgar was on hand to explain everything so he summoned what must be his slowest servant to give us a tour of the city and this servant told us that a dal leads a faction of naru called the chatar who we now know are part of the army of the light a group that of course we would meet in legion he goes on to tell us about the two dominant factions in the city first the aldor a group of light fanatics and another wing of the army of the light they represent the last native draenei priesthood on the planet secondly then the scriers a group of blood elves who followed their leader kel'thas to outland but when commanded to attack shatwrath the scryers amassed outside the city ready for war but unexpectedly they lay down their weapons their leader voronthal demanded to speak with adele and after doing so he pledged the scriyers to the chatar by the time khadgar's tour was over and players that had a look around themselves they would find this incredible mixing pot where so many different races and cultures those lost forgotten persecuted all came together in one great mixing pot truly something that felt unique from azeroth and an incredible place for our first off-world base of operations there was still much of outland to explore terracore gave way to the rolling hills of nagrand this was the closest we got to seeing an orcish homeland before warlords of draenor some notable locations were garadar the maghar capital oshogun the massive crystal with a narrow at its core that was actually a spaceship similarly we got to see the ogre stronghold in blade's edge mountain and blade's edge as a zone was experimental in design split into various subzones with sheer walls separating them you really need a flying mount to have a good time then cranking in the cosmic element netherstorm was a region representing the disintegration of draenor into outland somehow goblins had beat us to it and already set up the thriving research station of area 52 and then finally there was the desolate shadow moon valley the ultimate representation of cosmic doom in this expansion it was home to illidan's fortress the black temple a structure at the heart of villainy since warcraft ii and where there was a slight retcon in that hellfire citadel and black temple used to be in the same place but they were actually separated for this expansion which was a good thing because it did mean more content for us now that we know the road players took let's take a look at the dungeons they cleared along the way because dungeons were actually organized into hubs and in a far bigger way than they are today dungeons were relatively short as compared to some of vanilla's affairs but they had multiple wings and overall it meant we got a lot of content best of all they synergized with leveling perfectly there was always a dungeon wing in your zone with enough people in general to pug the expansion launched with 15 instances spread across four hubs hellfire citadel had three dungeon wings and the one boss magtharidon rate then the dungeon hub at the heart of zangar marsh's serpent lake had three dungeons and the serpent shrine cavern raid then the crypt city of akundun was a great example of being able to get loads of lore packed into one location one wing filled with ethereals another with arakoa and yet another with the orcish shadow council it wasn't just outland that got this treatment though players had been fascinated with the caverns of time since the anchorage war effort and they were about to get their opportunity to enter it again the design here was impressive it's no wonder that at least on my boxed copy of the game it took center stage with its big open rock face bleeding out into the twisting nether the conceit here was a neat one that we would be able to travel back to significant events in order to stop the villainous infinite dragonflight from destroying the timeline we then can't forget tempest keep and the dungeons that came along with it with their just incredibly different vibe of course essentially being dranai inter-dimensional fortresses something that was quite a change in pace from the regular content people had come to expect from world of warcraft now these dungeon hubs brought together the various different quest hubs into the more sort of opt-anti encounters right the conclusion of storylines for an example visiting thrall's grandmother in nagrand led us to kill high exarch maladaar in ocandune and then to free the naru door getting into the normal versions of these dungeons would require often keys and their heroic versions required wrap grinds quest chains and keys to enter we'll go over all of that of course when we talk about attunements a major feature or headache of this expansion depending on your opinion but first let's see what it was like rolling a new character there was a second less intense experience of launch night and that was rolling a new character world of warcraft two new races were a big deal but here's the thing the leveling experience hadn't actually changed and players were still signing up for a weeks-long process of traveling around the old world and this is something that will actually be different in world of warcraft classic the burning crusade than it was on life that's because classic the burning crusade is actually shipping with a quest xp and xp requirement change that would only happen a good chunk into the burning crusade expansion so at launch questing especially from zero to the new cap of 70 it was a serious undertaking of course there were good reasons to take on that new challenge many people understood the big time investment but they knew that they needed their horde paladins or their alliance shamans they needed them to be ready to raid karazhan or perhaps you just like the look of those new blue aliens or maybe you've wanted to play a blood elf since warcraft 3. alternatively you could have been one of the nearly two million relatively new world of warcraft players so let's take a look at these new races first up the blood elves players might have been mistaken for believing that the blood elves were the expansion's antagonists as kel'thes was of course one of the three main villains and it's just that thing if you did not read the quest text in these days you would be rather confused but no these blood elves were in fact left behind in silver moon and they never fell to the legion corruption that happened to kill thess and the people who followed him so spawning in in sunstrider isle we were introduced to their magical nature with these incredible just animated brooms and new particle effects and mobs all those little details that told us these were a very different group to of course the night elves who they were once a part of many many years ago then we went into the ruins of silverman clearing the wretched grounded us really in the elven struggle that these people had lost so much and that even after arthas carved his way through their kingdom they were still suffering and as we ventured out across the scar and into silver moon for the first time it was exciting silver moon was glorious it was like nothing we had ever seen before i remember it blowing my young mind as compared to the rest of what i'd seen in the game universe and this was before dalaran right before we'd seen sights like that so those big towers stretching up into the sky they seemed to have a graphical fidelity and shine that even outland lacked players would then continue their adventure through the tranquil eversong forest getting the blood elf people back onto their feet and then it was out into the ghostlands to forge a new partnership with the forsaken and for the blood elf people to take their place with the horde blood elves could not rule warriors but it didn't matter because the blood elf paladin became an extremely common sight and a staple of horde raiding blood elf casters then had a unique bump in pvp because they had access to an area of effect silence and a stackable mana tap as racials pretty damn powerful all around blood elves became an incredibly popular group having the most player characters in the horde not only throughout the burning crusade but in fact throughout every single expansion right up to shadowlands the most popular horde race it is the blood elves the announcement of the draenei was similarly met with a little bit of confusion probably more confusion than with the blood elves to be honest because sure we'd seen draenei before of course as those hunched over deformed broken that we helped illidan capture the black temple with in warcraft 3. but what we saw in this expansion was a radical re-characterization of akama's people it changed what people thought dranai were and these drunai were utterly steeped in the lore of the burning crusade they were exiles and in fact dranai means exiles one in their own language from the planet of argus there were survivors of a civil war that saw the eredar take their place as the legion's commanders and this was all fresh new lore even changing what people thought of sargeras they were dedicated to the mysterious new naru who were sort of considered to be well one of if not the most powerful entities in the lore at that time and their leader velen has become since an essential part of the lore but sadly for them a zermist and blood-missed isle just did not leave an impression on players likewise the axador was impressive with big naru at its heart but it quickly became the least visited alliance city their lore then was new and confusing people didn't think about the game in cosmic terms as they do now and their lore did actually include ratcons ratcons that now feel quite natural but at the time were jarring narrative confusion aside the alliance was extremely glad to have shamans on their side you see hoard raid clear times throughout vanilla had been faster and the community generally put this down to the horde having more throughput potential in their racial abilities and of course having shamans bloodlust giving everybody a massive power boost was of course extremely hard to beat otherwise then the draenei had gift of the narrow as their racial it was a weak heal over time but downtime was a big consideration that meant that just for leveling having this racial made the likes of warriors just that bit more appealing of course the default gameplay experience at this time was to fight one or two mobs and then to have a little sit down for 10 to 30 seconds well if you've got gift of the narrow it can help out they of course also had increased chance to hit which would help them hit their hit cap and also an affinity to the new profession jewelcrafting it would take a few more years for the draenei to really find their place in the lore but at least for right now in the burning crusade we got tantalizing hints of this world called argus we got shamans for the alliance and people thought they looked pretty cool they were generally quite well loved along with their blood elf counterparts meaning that really the new races added to the burning crusade were a tremendous success for blizzard jewelcrafting was a new primary profession that fueled this new socket system that was on gear now as we know sockets are native to certain pieces of epic gear and they would allow you to further augment your stat loadout what you may not know as a player of the modern game though is that at this time there were red yellow and blue sockets now if you color coordinated the color of your gems to the sockets on your gear you would in fact get an additional stat bonus now there were primary colored gems but there was also gems of combined colors so if one of the primary colors was uh in one of the mixed color gems you know like you're mixing paints back in school then you'd still get the bonus this was a system that allowed a lot of stat customization they were seen at the time as a natural evolution of classic gear progression and they fast became a great and quite well loved tool for hitting your stat goals you see you've got to remember that at this time in the game you had to reach your hit cap you had to reach your expertise cap you actually wanted to do damage on enemies of course you'd maybe need to hit defense cap if you were a tank these things were a vital concern they're not a part of the game now but with those being important anything that would let you tweak your stat load out was greatly appreciated by players by the time the burning crusade came around blizzard was really beginning to understand the way that players wanted to augment their gear and work out their class and this is something that's really true for so many aspects of the game you see the vanilla class forums were a hardcore place blizzard were under a lot of pressure to solve problems from players and a new expansion seemed like the time to do it bringing the talent tree to 41 points allowed blizzard to rebuild many specs even adding capstone talents that players for the most part were excited by and actually wanted and this is things like shadowstep making rogues a monster in pvp these capstone talents they gave us so many class-defining abilities that we couldn't really imagine not having today things like divine shield mutilate rampage shadow fury classic you see suffered from meme specs balanced druid was a joke rat paladins were unthinkable and don't get me wrong in burning crusade shamans still were some of the best healers and rat was still some of the worst dps there was outsiders as well like beastmaster hunters dominating throughout the expansion but overall the key takeaway here is that blizzard were beginning to understand not just a class's place in the game but also the place of each spec in the game independent of class so really no matter what spec you wanted to play even rat paladins you would find more of a place in end game content here than in the past an example of this change in class design is defiance now defiance was a core talent for protection warriors it increased their threat generation so core to a tank now in vanilla it was five points out of your 31 talent points so a pretty significant investment in the burning crusade they changed it to only be three points out of your total of 41 and with some expertise slapped on as well and that meant that you got a little bit more actual utility and less of an investment overall and that freed you up so basically lots of small changes like this one they opened up the viability of off meta tanking and leveling for warriors you know it lets you hybrid it up a bit more and generally speaking throughout all of the specs this is the sort of stuff that blizzard was taking a look at perhaps the boss shock incident of vanilla was one too many and they just wanted to get more of a handle in these things you've rolled your character fought through vanilla leveling went through the dark portal and are now level 70. it is time to earn your flying mount the burning crusades physical box featured flying right at the top and that is how excited players were about the prospect of soaring over outland the game introduced the new expert riding skill and it only cost 800 gold now that still was an investment for the day but the trade-off with this was 60 flying speed so it was actually slower than your ground mount but it was generally faster because you could hop over obstacles going as the crow flies now the truly practical way to fly was the artisan writing skill this increased your flying speed to a massive 280 percent but it cost a huge 5 000 gold and that was an insane a massive investment at that particular time to the point where many casual players really ended up having to well either farm up primals which were crafting resources for many months or just wait to wrath the lich king and earn the gold there now the alliance got griffins and the horde got wyverns there were other flying mounts throughout the expansion though but they were always prestigious items that required a lot of work and that meant that flying around not on a griffon was a pretty damn cool thing there was the nether wing drake that required a quest chain you know farming up drake eggs killing many many dragon maw orcs even doing the racing mini game and incidentally the netherwing quest chain to actually earn this mount it was the first time we actually got to interact with illidan in the entire expansion he was a villain that loomed over everything but he was otherwise absent like he was absent from the leveling experience it was only when you went to get this mount that you would see some of the big man himself now there were a few other options as well such as engineers being able to create a flying machine and it's turbocharged epic variant there was then the cinarion hippogriff which cost 1600 gold at exalted rep and finally the armored nether drake that gave you 310 flying speed but you'd have to be in the top 0.5 percent of contenders in your battle group so it was the ultimate prestige mount for pv beers of course there was more and it wasn't all there at launch there was the likes of status and all of the farming up of various different reagents in that gameplay loop to get your nether raise a pretty incredible experience and a massive new set of goals for players we could talk endlessly about the legacy of flight in the game and its impact because it's something blizzard still struggles with right up to today but if there's one thing you need to understand about flight in the burning crusade it was that players absolutely loved it and for many it was a north star for their character once you reached level 70 it was time to enter the world of tbc's and game and this meant one thing attunements remember everything i said about quests being well organized and being straightforward well you could say it's about to go out the window because every achievement brought you to well just every desolate corner of outland and in some cases even back to azeroth now attunement wasn't simply a process of you getting keys or getting an intro to certain dungeons it wasn't a roadblock like that even though in many ways it was a roadblock to getting into those dungeons what i mean is this is what you logged on to do every day this was like a major part of your character's journey nowadays we think of it simply as barriers to the next stage of content and that was largely the reason blizzard phased out attunements during wrath of the lich king but during the burning crusade it was a journey that spanned months and took quite a bit of thought effort and teamwork the achievement process culminated in the mount hyjal raid but to get into that you needed to get two vials of eternity one came from kel-fast sunstrider in the irate of tempest keep the second came from lady vash of serpent shrine cavern that's what players were aiming for that was the goal in sight mount hygel but this journey didn't have one defined starting point we see these big achievement charts these days right showing this super long complicated confusing process but when players took their first steps in the attunement journey you've got to remember that resources like wowhead they were in their infancy and most guides were colossal pdfs you had to download it was a very different experience to the game today generally the best place to begin was getting a tune for karazhan the first 10 man raid of this expansion but to do this you would have to get attuned to the alcatraz now you just needed to get flying to get to the entrance and then you needed a key to open the door now to get that key you had to clear the botanica and the machinar dungeons so that was a lot to do and once you'd unlocked that gate and you'd done that it was time to go to deadwind pass karazhan is the wizards tower of the warcraft setting such a classic thing the idea of a wizards tower and to get into warcraft's one we needed to get the masters key now the master's key was the achievement here and you got this by helping out the violet eye in investigating arcane disturbances around the tower and when we do that we discover that the master's key to karazhan had in fact been fragmented into three parts one of these parts was in the shadow labyrinths another was in the steam vault and the third in the alcatraz all these instances required some form of attunement with the alcatraz being the most involved but luckily you're already attuned to that next there was doing a full run of escape from dern holt which was of course to unlock the black morass dungeon now the black morass sent us back to the opening of the dark portal where we could actually just go and ask medivh himself for the key to his tower karazhan was breathtaking at the time it truly was it subverted players expectations and that's because it was nothing like the haggard old karazhan that was depicted in classic no it was this magnificent wizards tower filled with all sorts of unique enemies and interactions as an example you've got the famous theater boss fights which yeah were straightforward but they were highly thematic or of course the chas event which was definitely fun the first few times you did it the next special thing about it was that it was a 10-man rate it was a big shake-up to the 40-man raids that dominated classic and it meant that gills could just get their 10-man teams together quickly and even the larger guilds could run multiple squads of players it was an awesome raid as we all know and it culminated in the fight with the eredar prince malcazar in the twisting nether but there was a further boss knight bane and he was of course considered to be the true end boss of karazhan because of his greater difficulty and his later importance to the attunement process so yes we'll be back to karazhan soon enough kael'thas was far away the first of illidan's lieutenants to fight was lady vash serpentry and cavern's attunement was actually relatively short it began with a quest from scarthis in the heroic slave pens dungeon and yes we'll discuss the heroic achievement to actually get to that npc in a moment but he would give us a short quest chain which would culminate in the killing of gruel the dragon killer gruel's lair was yet another shake-up it was only a two-boss encounter with not that much trash in between the two of them now early in this expansion it required 25 people to defeat gruel was a famously brutal fight especially for uncoordinated groups of people he had a large health pool of 3.4 million and he would periodically grow which would increase the damage done by him by 15 so groups had about 10 minutes to get him down or else that damage would just overwhelm even the best geared of progression tanks gruel when he died would drop the earthen signet which you need to hold on to if you wanted to make the serpent shrine cavern key next you would need the blazing signet now this drop from the optional boss of karazhan nightbane and to summon nightbane you would have to adventure around outland gathering yourself the book of forgotten names from sethik hulls and the tomb of dusk from shattered hulls so that's two more dungeons to do you would then hand these into an npc outside area 52 another storm and then she would give you the blackened urn this is the urn that would of course summon nightbane from that point then it was just a matter of getting your group together heading back into karazhan re-clearing it and defeating nightbane so with the earthen and blazing signets it was then time to go back to scarthis in the slave pens for the mark of vash on the unlocking of the serpent shrine cavern sadly though you couldn't just go in and get vash's vial nope we would need to do a whole lot more achievements to get that quest line now serpent shrine cavern itself was the first 25-man raid with a full contingent of bosses and it really felt like just a big classic rate but classes certainly were working together a little bit better now it wasn't a memorable thing as compared to some other raids in the game but it was that first big test for active raiding communities now after karazhan grows lair and serpent shrine you would be attuned to every normal version of every dungeon next then it was time to get the key for all of their heroic modes and this necessitated some pretty damn epic reputation grinds the next big step in the process was getting a vial of eternity from kel'thas in the eye now to get the key to the raid players had to complete heroic shattered halls which required a key from being honored with honor hold or thralmar next then heroic shadow labyrinth which required being honored with the lower city of shattrath and then finally there's heroic alcatraz which required revered with the shatar and heroic steamvault which required honoured with the cinarion expedition that's quite a lot of gameplay and these reputations spanned the new continent and they were not uniform in their speed or quest distribution just as an example the fastest way to gain reputation with the lower city was with a repeatable quest that was called an outcast's plight this would give you 250 rep for handing in 30 arakoa feathers yes you got additional dungeon wrap from doing satick halls but if you really just wanted it fast you'd be doing those feathers and the overall thing would require 10 080 feathers for 26 quest hand-ins now some were a little more straightforward such as getting into shattered hulls that only required killing smith gorelunk in shadow moon valley who dropped a key for a molt you then need to get a bunch of crafting materials together and then you need to kill the fell reaver and hellfire peninsula which would finish that mold and give you the key as you can see this is quite a lot of stuff to be doing on your character this was in a era where you weren't hunting down artifact weapon appearances you weren't getting your renown levels or farming up your anima no you were getting attuned that was the gameplay that was the journey and in this case it was all leading to the eye [Music] now we're tuned with the regular dungeons their heroic modes and three out of the five launch raids it was time to get attuned to the eye of tempest keep but first you needed to get attuned to tempest keep yes i know it sounds a little ridiculous now but before you could begin getting the key to the eye you actually had to complete the five part cipher of damnation achievement now luckily that achievement didn't actually require any dungeons other than the odd group quest you could actually walk through the whole thing yourself and once that was complete well you got a letter sent from shattrath where you are asked to meet with a dal for the trials of the naru now these trials required running the heroic dungeons once again but with some added challenge like the trial of tenacity requiring us to save milhouse mana storm in the alcatraz now after you do the four trials a doll would then give you the tempest key the most notable thing out of the irade was of course the ashes of alarm mount something that many people still try to get to this day and of course this was a time where most people had regular griffins making the ashes of alar essentially the coolest thing in world of warcraft truly a prestige mount finally then it was time to lock in with the last reputation the keepers of time and that was needed to get entry to the battle for mount hyjal raid once revered soradormi would offer the quest the vials of eternity which required killing the final bosses of the eye and serpent shrine of course illidan's two lieutenants kel'thas and vash now vash was a relatively straightforward encounter as by the time players actually got to this achievement they'd already downed her before kel fass on the other hand though well he would remain outstanding until patch 2.1 and because of that we need to talk about raid clear times to get a real sense of the amount of effort players actually had to put into clearing these raids and to really allow you to understand what the achievement process really meant we've got to look at the kill timers so this expansion launched on the 16th of january so that's when the kill timer begins karazhan was cleared just 12 days after launch then gruel's lair and mctheridon's lair well those were raids that were really tuned for guilds that the type of whom had been farming blackwing lair and nax and vanilla so they were incredibly difficult raids for the majority of players at start of this expansion but those were still cleared within the first weeks of the expansion's launch now each world first boss kill here was either by top u.s raiding guild death and taxes or top eu guild nail them and this would essentially be a running theme throughout the expansion and its competitive scene serpent shrine cavern then took a little bit longer actually being cleared in march and this is where the story of the world first race really does change and does get weird you see patch 2.1 and the black temple they were to launch on the 22nd of may but tempest keep and the battle for mount hyjal still hadn't been cleared hyjal was in fact available since launch but it was held up by uh bugs bugs were kind of rampant throughout tier five rating mainly kale fast related stuff in tempest keep and this was for a bunch of reasons to list a few though several bosses required to unlock kel'thas's raid room such as alar and solarian they were bugged and they would randomly reset the encounter now these problems were much worse with kale that's himself between things like the legendary weapons mechanic just not working and kill that's well not resetting aggro between phases uh which meant that by phase four he would aggro on healers with tanks finding it literally impossible to pick up aggro again now this meant kael'thas was unkillable until he was fixed and as such players could not get their second vial of eternity blizzard fixed the bugs and they dropped all attunement for both tempest keep and serpent shrine with patch 2.1 with those changes keltas was actually downed in just three more days and players were finally attuned to the battle for mount hyjal it is fitting that we end today's retrospective with the battle for mount hygel this really was blizzard's big attempt to bring us back to one of well the most awesome battles in the franchise's entire history of course as depicted in warcraft 3. it brought back many named villains such as rage winter chill and antherion but it suffered greatly from the developer's attempts to make it feel more like a real-time strategy game battle with wave after wave of trash having to be cleared before you could even fight the boss with there being no way to game it no way to do the trash faster to skip it or anything like that and that meant the players just had to bash their way through the entire thing making what initially could have been one of the coolest raids as a spectacle end up being one of the just most chore like to end up farming it was meant to be the capstone of the burning crusade's launch but because of bugs and achievements players were immediately turning their eyes to the expansion's most memorable raid the black temple which of course is a raid that really should have been cleared way after mount hyjal but those bugs and issues made the whole thing happen a little bit out of sync so next week we're going to be diving into the lord of outlands fortress the lore that underpinned that raid and why it was considered to be so memorable we've got a lot more in store for part two including the global arena tournaments i mean the arena pvp system the isle of kaldenas patch zone and the burgeoning world of warcraft community because it really is by this time the burning crusade that the community efforts of world of warcraft places like warcraft movies the machinima scene where those really started to develop and flourish and that is what sets so much of the culture that was present whenever world of warcraft hit it's its all-time peak i hope you enjoyed today's video certainly is a big chunky one real fun trip through memory lane and of course something that soon enough you'll be able to relive with classic the burning crusade thank you for watching and i will see you in the next episode [Music] you

Channel: Bellular Warcraft

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Keywords: world of warcraft, warcraft, wow, bellular, bellulargaming, bellular news, shadowlands, shadowlands lore, bellular shadowlands, wow shadowlands, wow 9.1, blizzcon, bellular tbc, tbc, tbc classic, burning crusade classic, tbc prepatch, bcc, tbcc, classic, wow tbc, wow tbc history, complete history of wow, complete history of tbc, tbc retrospective, bellular history, bellular tbc history, bellular wow history, wow history, wow tbc classic

Id: Fl2O5ACHCCo

Length: 45min 55sec (2755 seconds)

Published: Thu May 20 2021