World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade (abbreviated as TBC or BC) is the first expansion for World of Warcraft. It was announced on 28 October 2005 and released on 16 January 2007 in North America, Europe, and Australia; 2 February 2007 in Korea; 3 April 2007 in Taiwan and Hong Kong; and 6 September 2007 in mainland China. Its main features include an increase of the level cap up to 70, the introduction of the blood elves and the draenei as playable races, and the addition of the world of Outland, along with many new zones, dungeons, items, quests, and monsters. On 29 June 2011, the expansion was integrated into the basic World of Warcraft package, granting all subscribers access to all of the content and features of the expansion at no additional cost. This expansion came in two versions: Standard Edition and Collector's Edition.

The Burning Crusade-related content on Wowpedia is categorized in Category:The Burning Crusade.

Release information
In preparation for The Burning Crusade, Blizzard Entertainment released patch 2.0.1 in North America and Europe on 5 December 2006. This patch introduced some of The Burning Crusade's content prior to the release of the expansion itself — including a revamp of the honor system, skirmish Arena matches, and a new Looking For Group interface.

The expansion was released in standard as well as Collector's Edition packages. The Collector's Edition of The Burning Crusade includes a bonus Behind-The-Scenes DVD, an in-game Netherwhelp pet and many other exclusive extras. Installing the expansion does not break backwards compatibility — players were still able to log on to non-BC accounts using The Burning Crusade client.

System requirements for both editions remained virtually unchanged compared to the original World of Warcraft, with the notable exception of the increase in the required network bandwidth (from 56k dial-up to a "broadband connection"). Blizzard stated that the change was due to the size of the future patches, and that it will continue to offer tech support to players with dial-up, except for patching issues.

Lore
The quests in The Burning Crusade are generally set in continuity with original lore quests, meaning that in relation to the timeline, the expansion is the direct sequel to the original World of Warcraft. Some quests set in Outland, especially those that are related to Illidan, mention a five-year hiatus in the storyline, which suggests a one-year interval between The Burning Crusade and the original game. This is unconfirmed however, since there never was any real statement that the events of Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne take place one year after Reign of Chaos. Regardless, it is generally agreed upon that there was a four year break between Warcraft III and the start of World of Warcraft.

The expansion introduces Outland, the former world of Draenor, and numerous quests essentially allowing players to explore the world on their own. The main storyline points to Illidan the Betrayer and what happened to him during the last four years. Players can also complete quests that involve either aiding Illidan or making preparations for his downfall.

In addition, there are many links between the former world of Draenor and the current Outland, such as the opening of the Dark Portal by Medivh, which is relived in the Caverns of Time, and various quest chains which provide insight into the history of the old Orcish shamans and their relationship with Burning Legion long before the First War.

The Burning Crusade also centers on the two new playable races and their affiliation to the game's storyline. Many plot holes are filled with quests that align the blood elves with the Horde and the draenei with the Alliance. Players still must complete quests in the old world of Azeroth to fully understand the lore related to Outland.

New races
The Burning Crusade introduced two new playable races:


 * Blood elf — A faction of former Alliance members join the Horde in the expansion. They are led by Regent Lord Lor'themar Theron. The blood elf capital is Silvermoon City. Their racial mount is the bird-like hawkstrider and their language is Thalassian.
 * Draenei — A faction of uncorrupted eredar join the Alliance. They are led by their prophet, Velen. The draenei capital city is the Exodar. Their racial mount is the elephant-like elekk and their language is Draenei.

The expansion also allows previously faction-exclusive classes to be played on the opposing faction, with the inclusion of blood elf paladins for the Horde and draenei shaman for the Alliance.

New mounts
Each new race received its own unique mount:
 * Blood elf — A hawkstrider (originally called a cockatrice). These mounts can be found outside the entrance to Silvermoon City. Blood elf paladin mounts, are the same as Alliance though they are red instead of the Alliance blue.
 * Draenei — An elekk. These mounts can be found outside The Exodar.

New rare mounts are also available as drops from high-end instances such as Karazhan.

Flying mounts
Flying mounts are only usable in Outland at level 70 (this was changed to level 60 in patch 3.2.0). The Horde and Alliance have the wyvern and gryphon, respectively, as standard mounts. The epic mounts are the armored wyvern and armored gryphon.

In addition, there are also rare flying mounts such as the netherdrake and the swift netherdrake. An armored nether drake can be obtained by ranking in the top 0.5% at the end of an Arena season, and the unarmored netherdrake can be obtained through a series of quests. Patch 2.1.0 also introduced the nether ray flying mount.

Normal flying mount training costs and the mount costs. Training for flying mounts requires a skill of 150 (epic mount) and brings it up to 225. The epic version of the flying mount cost for the training and  to buy. Training for epic flying mounts requires 225 riding skill and upgrades it to 300. Faction reputation discounts apply to the prices.

Druids receive Flight Form at level 60 that offers the ability to fly and has a speed equivalent to a normal flying mount. Druids may obtain a quest at level 70 to obtain an epic flight form or wait until level 71 to train it without doing the quest chain. Purchasing riding skill 300 is a requirement for the quest.

New spells and talents
In the expansion, Blizzard added five to six new spells for the 60-70 level range to each class in order to round out the classes better. The talent trees were also greatly expanded and revised. All classes have additional talents leading up to a 41 talent point ability. Players gain new spells at every level from 60-70 instead of every two levels.

Since the Paladin and Shaman classes are no longer unique to either faction, Blizzard added new abilities to each class to make them what they truly feel they should be: Paladins received a long-awaited spell, Righteous Defense (a long-range, mass taunt-like ability); and Shamans received the spell Bloodlust (a long-cooldown, powerful buff) to complement their DPS and utility roles.

See each class's respective page for more specific information regarding new spells and talents.

Combat rating system
With the release of The Burning Crusade, critical strike, defense, hit rate, spell critical, and dodge stats as well as a new stat, resilience, changed from being absolute percentages to ratings, with each player level requiring more rating points to achieve the same absolute percentage.

New starting areas
The blood elves have two new starting areas located in the Eastern Kingdoms:
 * Eversong Woods — Levels 1-10
 * Ghostlands — Levels 10-20

Similarly, the draenei have two starting zones off the western coast of Kalimdor:
 * Azuremyst Isle — Levels 1-10
 * Bloodmyst Isle — Levels 10-20

Although these starting areas are considered part of Azeroth, and appear on its world map, they are implemented in one or more separate instances. Thus, when riding or walking from other old-world zones (such as Eastern Plaguelands), you must pass through an instance portal to enter them. Furthermore, players cannot fly in these zones, even with the Flight Master's License.

New continent
The expansion heralds the addition of Outland, an entirely new continent/world, reachable through the Dark Portal in the Blasted Lands and portals in several major cities. Interactive maps and otherwise detailed maps are available for use.

Outland contains the following zones:
 * Hellfire Peninsula — Levels 58-63
 * Zangarmarsh — Levels 60-64
 * Terokkar Forest — Levels 62-65
 * Nagrand — Levels 64-67
 * Blade's Edge Mountains — Levels 65-68
 * Netherstorm — Levels 67-70
 * Shadowmoon Valley — Levels 67-70

New high-level dungeons
The expansion has added several dungeons, most with separate wings to make runs faster, including some in both in Outland and Azeroth. The dungeons contain a plethora of new equipment including Tier 4, Tier 5 and Tier 6 armor pieces.

Azeroth

 * Karazhan in Deadwind Pass
 * Caverns of Time in Tanaris
 * Zul'Aman in Ghostlands (added in patch 2.3)
 * Isle of Quel'Danas in Quel'Thalas (added in patch 2.4)

Outland

 * Hellfire Citadel, located on the Hellfire Peninsula
 * Coilfang Reservoir in the Zangarmarsh
 * Auchindoun in the Terokkar Forest
 * Tempest Keep outside Netherstorm
 * Gruul's Lair in the Blade's Edge Mountains
 * Black Temple in the Shadowmoon Valley

Raid and instance changes
All future raids will now have caps not exceeding 25 players (older raids will remain at a 40 player cap, at least for now). This was done to allow a greater number of players to participate in epic raids, and to allow more flexibility in the design of encounters.

In addition, high level instances have a feature allowing players to have the option to run the instances at two different difficulty levels: Normal and Heroic. This would turn normal level 60-70 instances into much harder level 70 instances with better loot. The final boss of every hard mode instance will drop epic items, and every boss in hard mode instances will drop tokens to get special gear available in Shattrath. These instances will be marked with a purple portal.

Jewelcrafting and socketed items
Jewelcrafting allows the crafting of rings, trinkets, necklaces and special jewels that can be used in specific items, called Socketed Items.

New specializations and profession abilities
For professions, the expansion adds a new level past Artisan (300) called Master (375). For certain races and professions, this can be maxed to 390 (for gnomish engineers, draenei jewelcrafters, tauren herbalists, and blood elf enchanters).

Characters are also be able to take advantage of new specializations within each profession as well as many new recipes, enchantments, patterns and schematics.

Eye of the Storm
A new battleground called Eye of the Storm (or Eots) is based in Outland. This battleground features a mix of holding territory and capture the flag styles of gameplay. Each team has 15 members ranging from levels 61-69, 70-79, 80-84, and 85 in its own bracket.

Team PvP Arena
Following the introduction of Arena PvP, level 70 players are able to win prizes in these matches. The rewards for the arena is on par with even the most powerful PvE rewards. There are currently three Arenas: The Ring of Trials in Nagrand, the Circle of Blood in Blade's Edge Mountains, and the Ruins of Lordaeron, above Undercity.

Voice acting
Contrary to the popular belief that Blizzard Entertainment did not bring back any of the original voice actors, in actuality almost half of them were brought back.

In Battle for Mount Hyjal, the voice actors of Thrall and Tyrande were their original voice actors in Warcraft III; Azgalor and Rage Winterchill didn't have speech in Warcraft III; Archimonde's voice actor remains the same (although he sounds different - it is probable that Blizzard used different modulations for the voice). Anetheron's voice actor was changed but likely because of his minor role in Warcraft III (with just three quotes ) Blizzard wasn't able to find him.

Illidan's original voice actor, Matthew Yang King, was changed due to guild union reasons. But his lieutenants Kael'thas and Lady Vashj were kept with the original voice actors. Akama's voice actor was changed probably for his minor role in Warcraft III (with just the gag quotes and two cinematic speeches ). And Maiev's original voice actor was brought back.

Kil'jaeden's and Magtheridon's voice actors weren't brought back, probably for their minor roles in Warcraft III (with Magtheridon just having two quotes and Kil'jaeden appearing only in two interludes ).

The voice actors for the heroes of the Alliance Expedition were not changed either; instead, they were given the default human/dwarven NPC voices. However, Khadgar's voice actor was altered in News From Outland: Crisis at Da Portal! official video. The Horde of Draenor hero's voice actors were changed, Kargath's voice actor used to be Bill Roper but he left Blizzard years before the release of The Burning Crusade, while Teron Gorefiend's voice actor was changed for unknown reasons.

Rexxar's and Nazgrel's voices are also the default voice of the orcs. The introduction of Zul'Aman in patch 2.3.0 gave Zul'jin a unique voice actor for the first time in The Burning Crusade (in Warcraft II, his character used the default troll axe thrower voice).

Medivh's voice actor was changed from Michael Bell to Cam Clarke for unknown reasons. Additionally, Sylvanas's original voice actress Piera Coppola did not sing Lament of the Highborne.

The Hellfire Peninsula issue
When The Burning Crusade expansion was released, Hellfire Peninsula became severely overloaded as almost the entire playerbase, on every server, came here to start playing the expansion. As a result there were a few server issues, and ingame huge groups of players of both factions were trying to do the same quests in the same place for the same mobs at the same time. As a few days passed and people finally moved on to other zones, the problem died down. It is because of this that the next two expansions offered two starting zones - Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord in Wrath, and Hyjal and Vashj'ir in Cataclysm. A single-zone starting area was not done again until Mists of Pandaria, with both factions starting on opposite ends of the Jade Forest, and in Warlords the factions start in completely different zones.

Patch changes
The Burning Crusade received four major content patches. The patch release schedule differed radically from the original World of Warcraft, with content introduced in large chunks, and balancing fixes often added as separate minor patches between the content patches.