Burning Crusade Endgame: Level 70 - Saturday, April 23, 2011

Just like when Burning Crusade launched, and the Level 60 raids were put aside in favor of Outland content, when Wrath of the Lich King was released the endgame content for Level 70 became an afterthought...too much effort for rewards that were quickly made obsolete by Northrend gear.  Here's a quick look at all of the content that level capped players were enjoying during the Burning Crusade.  

The first raid for a majority of players was Karazahn, a 10-person raid located in a haunted tower previously occupied by the archmage Medivh.  In the past, Medivh was possessed by the demonlord Sargeras, who used his considerable magical powers to open the Dark Portal, and allow the orcs to enter Azeroth from Draenor.  After his death, he atoned for the opening of the Portal by uniting the Horde and Alliance forces for a desperate, and successful, attempt to fight off the Burning Legion's invasion into Azeroth.  

Karazahn has a number of unique fights, including one in an opera house that chooses between three scenarios randomly...

 a game of chess that you play against the (sometimes cheating) Spirit of Medivh...

 and one against an undead dragon. 

The final boss is atop the highest spire, and pits you against a Burning Legion bigwig, Prince Malchezaar.  

 I've already covered Magtheridon and Serpentshrine Cavern.  

You also get to finally put the screws to Kael'Thas Sunstrider for betraying his fellow Blood Elves and throwing in his lot with Illidan.  You find him in The Eye, a portion of Tempest Keep floating off the coast of Netherstorm.  

Shortly before you fight Kael'Thas, you face his pet phoenix, Al'ar...

and eventually, the man himself.  He has a rare chance to drop the Ashes of Al'ar, a pretty bitchin' mount.  For this reason, he is still slaughtered by a number of people on a weekly basis.  

Anticipated by many since the launch of the Burning Crusade, the Black Temple instance allows you to take on Illidan in his Shadowmoon Valley fortress.  

Players can get a history lesson by heading to the Caverns of Time and participating in the Battle for Mount Hyjal from years ago.  

This battle, a result of Medivh's desperate attempt to unite the Horde and Alliance to fight off the Burning Crusade, is a timed event that sees your raid take on waves of enemies, with bosses interspersed within.  This was playable in real time strategy form in Warcraft III, but it's a neat way to get a different perspective on a familiar fight.  The final boss is the Burning Legion lord Archimonde, who lost the original fight to a tree.  

The final patch of the Burning Crusade introduced the Isle of Quel'Danas to players.  

This Level 70-only area was phased, which meant that the content changed as players accomplished more quests.  This area was the site of Arthas' slaughter of the blood elves, and destruction of the Sunwell, the original source of the blood elves' power.

When you first arrive, you are fighting to take the shore from the Burning legion...then eventually you establish some camps further in...then after awhile, an armory has opened, etc.  A nearby five-person dungeon, Magister's Terrace, sets the stage for the final raid of the expansion.  

Kael'Thas is still alive, albeit in very bad shape after his defeat at Tempest Keep. 

He has essentially sold his soul to the Burning Legion, and is using the reactivated Sunwell to summon the ruler of the Legion, Kil'Jaeden, to Azeroth.  After you defeat him, you are free to take on Sunwell Plateau, and close the portal that has opened to Kil'Jaeden. 

It's important to note that you don't kill Kil'Jaeden, you merely send him back where he came from.  

Shadowmoon Valley: Level 67 - Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Similar to the original game's Blackrock Mountain, Shadowmoon Valley is as close to a 'final zone' that the Burning Crusade has.  The entire zone gears you up for the final fight against Illidan, which will take place in the Black Temple, which makes up most of the eastern border of the area.  Alliance players check into the Wildhammer Stronghold...

and Horde players get Shadowmoon Village.  

a few of the early quests have you dealing with some relatively small fish, like some stray ghost arrokoa and trouble-causing Naga...

but soon you finally get your chance to do some real damage against the Burning Legion, by infiltrating their ranks and sabotaging their bases from within.  

The Scryers and Aldor have also established bases close to the Black Temple, for the impending attack.

One optional path that players can take is to trick the Dragonmaw orcs who serve Illidan into taking them into their ranks.  This unlocks a number of daily quests that have you doing menial work for the orcs, while also sabotaging their mining operations and freeing netherwing drake eggs from the orcs, who break the noble dragons to use as mounts.  Eventually, when you reach a certain reputation, you are unmasked and ordered before Illidan himself, but some of the drakes that you helped whisk you off to the safety of Shattrath, and even allow you the honor of keeping one of them as a mount.  

The final phase of the zone sets the stage for your eventual raid on the Black Temple.  You are sent to meet with Akama, a broken draenei who threw in his lot with Illidan in order to attempt to take the Black Temple back from the orcs who had invaded.  He is having second thoughts about his master, realizing that he replaced one set of viscous overlords with another, and is now prepared to help you defeat Illidan.  He gives you a set of quests to prove your loyalty, and afterwards, some quests to facilitate your entrance to the Black Temple.  

 

However, the front door of the Temple is heavily guarded, and your raid will have to find another way to enter Illidan's stronghold....

Outland & Hellfire Peninsula: Level 58: Saturday, April 9, 2011

The Burning Crusade, WoW's first expansion, was released in January of 2007, when the game was just over two years old, and made some significant changes that players had to adjust to.  The Level Cap was raised from 60 to 70, and a new race was added for each faction, with the Horde receiving blood elves and the Alliance receiving draenei.  With this new arrivals, Horde players were able to create paladins, and Alliance players were granted shaman for the first time.  In addition, an entire new continent was added for players to explore; the shattered planet of Draenor, the original home of the orcs and former refuge for the draenei, before their doomed flight to Kalimdor.  

The main antagonist of The Burning Crusade is Illidan Stormrage, a disgraced Night Elf, who through a series of events involving his obsession with turning back a demon army, even going so far as to become a demon himself.  His backstory is very complex, but at the time of the Burning Crusade, he has claimed the Black Temple on Outland as his stronghold, and waits for adventurers to challenge him.  His most formidable allies are Kael-Thas Sunstrider, the traitor Blood Elf ruler, who has commandeered the portion of the Draenei's vessel that remained in Outland, and is draining the magic from the core of the planet, and Lady Vashj, a naga queen who is draining the scarce water sources of Outland in order to control supply.  They are the bosses of the Tempest Keep and Serpentshrine Cavern raids, respectively.  

So now that we've established the previous reasons for heroes to travel to Outland, it's time to bring up a fundamental flaw with the story flow of World of Warcraft's first two expansions.    The major antagonists in the Burning Crusade, and later, Wrath of the Lich King, have been destroyed.  Even the newest loading screen for Outland reflects this change, as it no longer shows Illidan and Kael'Thas, who players have already defeated, but the new heroes of Outland that helped players in the past.  These changes have been made to the loading screens, but when you go into the new areas, its as if nothing has happened, and your character is the first to experience everything.  However, every character has to level, and Outland, and later Northrend, are the only places to level, so off we go.  

Your first destination of the expansion is the aesthetically harsh Hellfire Peninsula.  The color scheme from the Blasted Lands carries over into Outland, as the desolation wrought by the unstable planet is evident from the moment you enter.  

You immediately encounter the Burning Legion (big bad demon group, cause of everything bad in The Burning Crusade) forces that have begun invading Azeroth through the portal, and are thrust into the defensive fight.  Alliance players make for Honor Hold

while Horde players report to Thrallmar.  

Every player, regardless of faction, begins The Burning Crusade here in Hellfire Peninsula, so when the expansion first launched, this zone was a bloodbath of player vs. player combat, so crowded and almost unplayable that when Blizzard designed The Wrath of the Lich King they implemented two starter zones, so that the player base would be divided.  In addition, they had to find a way to make the new content playable for both players who had only recently hit Level 60, and those who had been 60 since the game's release and had obtained powerful gear from dungeons, raids and battlegrounds.  As a result, the game goes through a gear 'reset', so that in your first couple of hours in Outland, everyone receives extremely powerful upgrades to armor and weapons, so that they can all progress on pretty much the same path.  

Aside from getting recent arrivals acclimated to Outland, a majority of the quests in Hellfire Peninsula are designed around streamlining players into the first two dungeons available, the Ramparts and Blood Furnace of the Hellfire Citadel, which is located in the middle of the zone. 

Here, the leader of the orcs on Outland, Kargath Bladefist, in an effort to hold off the recent arrivals from Azeroth, has made a desperate attempt to preserve himself and his people by infusing them with the blood of a powerful demonic pit lord.  Naturally, it's your job to go in and put a stop to it.  


Also, and not because they're a huge part of the game, being involved in only one quest to my knowledge, Hellfire Peninsula has these giant mechanical things called Fel Reavers that patrol all over the place, and will instantly kill anybody they are able to sneak up on.  This was quite a surprise the first time it happened to you!