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[GOTY] Best RPG/Strategy Game of 07: World of Warcraft : Burning Crusade

Akshay Masand — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 13:50:16 -0600

Why It Won: World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade is the expansion to the award-winning, life-absorbing MMORPG World of Warcraft. It adds new battlegrounds, items, lands, races, and much more to the original game. This expansion bumps up the content of the original game tremendously and makes sure that there's never mindless killing to get the huge number of experience points needed to level-up. While most of the content is for post level 60 players, there are also two new races, the Blood Elf and the Draenei, alongside with two classes: the Shaman for the alliance and the Paladin for the Horde, available to new players as well as old-timers who'd like to experience the lower levels again but from a new angle.

Before the expansion pack, World of Warcraft sort of "ends" once you reach level 60. With the addition of the expansion those who were already 60 now had the challenge of getting to the new level cap which is 70. New areas and quests were released to interest people to level-up alongside with all the player-versus-player action. New items encouraged many to farm for gold, PvP for honor points, and raid for goods to make their character all the more powerful. The new major PvP part of the expansion included an area known as "Eye of the Storm" which is a mixed capture bases and capture the flag type of game where whichever team gets 2,000 points first wins. It is exclusive to higher level players with two brackets, one for those who are levels 60-69 and another which is only for level 70 players. This all combined together proved to be a huge success for the WoW community.

The expansion added a rich new taste to the already great World of Warcraft which proved to be "The MMO to end all other MMO's". It's easy for any person to pick it up and enjoy it. It's well balanced and receives updates every so often as well. The decisions you make here are going to affect your character in the long run -- but you always have the option to change your mind. Overall, Blizzard did an excellent job and further enhanced the experience for older addicts and for those who are soon to become them. If you haven't tried this MMORPG, you need to head over to the site and check out the trial version to see what all the hype is about.

Why You May Disagree: World of Warcraft being a few years old, it's hard to believe that an expansion pack could be better than any original RPG or strategy game released this year. MMOs only appeal to a certain type of person. Most of the content is for level 60 players anyway.

But We Say: Burning crusade adds so much to the game that you could spend a whole year ignoring other RPGs just to hit 70. RPGs only appeal to a certain type of person too... RPG fans. And yes, the bulk of the new content is for people already at level 60, as the point of an expansion pack is to "expand" the game beyond its previous limit. The fact that there are two new classes and other treats for beginners/lower-levelers is a bit of a bonus.

Runner Up:

Mass Effect: The dialog and narrative system in Mass Effect is pretty innovative, but after hours and hours of listening to people talk, I'm not sure if there's anything else to do here. For a self-titled "Action-RPG," there's not a lot of action and the RPG elements become tedious after a while. It's beautiful and deep, but not a whole lot of fun. To be honest, if BioWare hadn't let it "slip" that there would be sex in this game I'm not sure if nearly as many people would have bothered.

World of Warcraft Expansion Announced

The Gaming Horizon Archive — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 16:11:00 -0600

BlizzCon is currently going in Anaheim, Caliafornia right now and Blizzard Entertainment just announced the expansion pack to World of Warcraft. Entitled, The Burning Crusade will feature two new playable races--including the magical Blood Elves, increase on the level cap to 70, new high-level dungeons to explore in Azeroth, Outland, and elsewhere, and much more

Blizzard is currently looking into providing the expansion VIA internet, but no other information has been released. Gaming Horizon will keep you abreast of any other further developments as it becomes available. In the mean time, check out the first screenshots below.

Originally written by Tim Grube

Pirates At PAX

The Gaming Horizon Archive — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 15:13:00 -0500

This article was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Certain formatting, imaged, and embedded content may have been lost in the transition process.The original author is Nate Francis.

Rusty at Flying Lab recently posted a new developer's journal, wherein we learn that the release date for the swashbuckling MMORPG Pirates of the Burning Sea will be announced at the upcoming PAX convention in August. Quoth Rusty:

As I said, we have a scheduled time to announce our ship date, and given its proximity to PAX, weve decided to announce the date there. PAX is a great show, its really the only sizeable gathering thats for the fans, by the fans, and while E3 serves a purpose, we expect to keep on using PAX as our main presence each year.

Yar! Welcome news to those of us who could stand a break from the traditional genre offering by sharpening up a cutlass and cultivating a healthy case of scurvy.

Read the entire journal entry here. Avast!