No, Burning Crusade was not an abject failure. It certainly kept a lot of people enjoying the game for a long time, yours truly included. In hindsight, though, I can see why I’m positively giddy with what I’m seeing in Wrath, and how it is light years beyond what BC ever hoped to be. BC had some great instances, and added a lot to World of Warcraft overall, but it came up short in so many ways. In terms of zone design and quest design, Wrath absolutely blows BC out of the water.
Before we get started, let me put on my fanboi suit. I know it’s around here somewhere…lessee…
Ahh, yes, here it is:
I couldn’t in good faith do a new blog post without including the 7 Levels of Awesomeness Murloc Suit. Whoever came up with that quest should get a raise. Or maybe a yacht.
Zone Design
I’m talking about this first not because it’s the most important, but rather because it’s the first thing I really noticed. Do you remember the first time you took the boat to the Howling Fjord? I sure as heckfire do. Boat rides normally meant go make a sandwich time, but the entry into the Fjord was absolutely jaw-dropping for me. It’s the first zone I hit in the beta, and it’s the first taste I really got of the expansion. I remember vividly thinking as the boat went along "That’s awesome." "Wow, that’s awesome, too." "How cool is that." And it continued. Just look at the waterfalls, the sky, the keep in the distance. Beautiful.
So, do you remember when you first entered the Dark Portal in BC? Sure, there was a cool battle going on right at the entrance, but what about the zone in general? Rust colored, busted up mountain terrain. Not all that exciting. As I thought about this post, I tried to think about something memorable to say about the first zone in BC. Well, I couldn’t really think of anything. Hellfire Peninsula was essentially the same theme repeated ad nauseam – floating, red rocks and mountains. Bleh.
Now, let’s think about Borean Tundra, for comparison’s sake. The zone is both beautiful and, more importantly, varied. It’s almost like it has a half-dozen mini zones within the larger zone. Coastlines, snowy mountains, lakes, plains, ruins, you name it. It’s all there. Hell, you might argue that there is more variety in the Borean Tundra than all of the Outlands combined. And that’s just ONE ZONE! I have now seen nearly ALL of Borean, the Fjord, Dragonblight and the Grizzly Hills. Every one of them is beautiful and interesting.
Looking back, I’m having a hard time remembering an Outland zone I REALLY liked. SMV, Netherstorm, Blade’s Edge, Terokkar and Hellfire all kind of sucked, to be honest. I turn my back on them without hesitation. Sure, each one had one redeeming quality or two, but overall they were just flat out boring. Nagrand and Zangarmarsh were OK. That’s the best I can do.
Quest Design
My first thoughts on quests in Northrend? "Holy crapload of quests, Batman!" It starts off slow, but before long there is a flood of quests. There are many, many quest hubs, and most have their own individual flavors. I remember that at first I was intimidated by the 1.5 million EXP I’d need to level, but then before I knew it I was halfway home. The reason I hardly realized my quick progress was because the quests were just so damn interesting.
Sure, there are plenty of vanilla "kill 10 of this, gather 12 of that" quests, but there are just as many different and interesting quests to keep things rolling. Vehicle quests, long, interesting chains, plenty of lore that’s worth reading.
Looking back at BC, I can only think of a handful of memorable quest lines. The Sons of Oronok chain in SMV, the Gorefiend line in SMV, the Ogri’la attunement series. These quests were all interesting because they had visceral payoffs in terms of story and rewards.
In Northrend, I can think of at least that many memorable quest lines in Borean Tundra alone.
The Mechazod quest line:
The Dragon quest line outside the Nexus:
Last Rites:
All of these quest lines I just mentioned have one thing in common: big time payoffs. The quests in Northrend make you feel like you’re actually DOING something, not just looking for big EXP. And how cool is it that you see Arthas so early and often? The funny thing is, I haven’t even mentioned the Wrathgate series. If you know what I mean by that, you know what I mean. Wow Wrathgate, just wow.
Even crazier is the fact that the three great quest lines I mention above are all in the introductory zone, Borean Tundra. The memorable BC quests I noted are from much later in that game’s progression.
Final Thoughts
It’s really pretty simple, when you think about it. Blizzard gets a little better at what they do all the time. It’s really just like anything, you might do ok when you start out, but the more experience you get, the better the results usually are. Think about McDonald’s, they didn’t have the Big Mac right at the start, they just really had regular old hamburgers and cheeseburgers. It took some practice for them to churn out the genius that is the Big Mac. I believe the same can be said for WoW. Classic WoW was a good start, BC expanded on the game and experimented with some things, and now Wrath has taken the knowledge gained from BC and run with it. Instances are faster. Off specs can tank or heal normal 5 mans. Rep grinds are streamlined. Quests and lore are actually engaging. So thus far, bravo Blizzard. I’ve only seen 4 zones thus far (though every inch of said zones) but I have a lot of optimism for the future. I guess my only question is whether Blizz will be able to keep this streak going!
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You make it sound like you had an entirely miserable time trudging through TBC the way you write, and that the whole game sucked until wrath came out. At least thats what comes across in the way you write. The truth most ppl agree on is that tbc was a massive upgrade from vanilla. Yes, i remember the first time I went through the portal; I was blown away. The first time in shattrath? omg!!! Wondering into zangamarsh and checking out those mushrooms & that haunting music…. fantastic loot dropping everywhere, cool new profession items to make, the promise of flying at lvl 68… the epic flight form quest and finially completeing it…. picking up my earthwarden at 230am one morning…. beautiful new istances and heroics…. Unbelievably gorgeous raid instances…. buying the ultimate dps weapon with heroic badges & getting it enchanted… The list goes on and on, as it would have to, considering how much of my life I devoted to playing. If you look at what the cutting edge was in the past from a point in the future, you’re gonna be tempted to rewrite history. TBC was so awesome because there was no wrath back then, and they couldnt have created wrath without going through TBC – thats the nature of creativity and development. I’m not entirely disagreeing with wat you write becacuse I understand where you’re coming from – just think you could frame the context with more generosity & insight.
Thanks for the comment, as always John.
Perhaps I didn’t make it clear enough that I did indeed have a good time in BC. I’ve played WoW from the early phases of Beta, and BC was a big upgrade over what there was in Classic WoW. There was just plain too much in BC that I found myself trudging through. Too many of the zones were bland, too many of the quest lines forgettable, and far too many lame rep grinds. Much of what I found myself doing in BC was in order to get to the level cap, so I could enjoy the REAL game. The “end game” of BC was very good. I loved running SSC, MH and BT. But the fact is that I didn’t really enjoy the ride to 70 as much as I’m enjoying the leveling game in Wrath.
I’ll try to be nicer to BC in the future.
In some ways this post is meant as a shock of cold water.
I was thinking about what you said about memorable questlines and things like that. What hits me is that they want all that cool content to get out to as many people as possible. I know at least for myself, the three characters I leveled up in BC, I never finished SMV or Netherstorm quests. Perhaps many people were the same way, leveling in instances ,and outleveling the game, so they missed some of the great higher level questlines. In Wrath the cool quests are right in the beginning so everyone can see them. At least, in my opinion.
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“As I thought about this post, I tried to think about something memorable to say about the first zone in BC. Well, I couldn?t really think of anything. ”
The sky. It blew me away and it still does. The sky is amazing in most of the TBC zones, but Hellfire Peninsula in particular is gorgeous…. and came as so unexpected.
The second thing would be a Fel Reaver. You have to remember the first time you were out killing hell boars and had your entire screen shake. You probably panned around your camera, saw a huge foot of the nearby reaver, and almost passed out….. those things were intimidating! And then later on, when you were higher level, you got a quest to kill one! The vindication!
TBC had lots of moments too….. by they were fewer and farther between than Wrath’s – I’ll definitely give you that.
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And what do you think is the biggest cause? The biggest difference maker?
BC shattered records at the time but without it, we’d never have Wrath the way we have it now. A bigger budget can bring lots of benefits =D!
I got where you were coming from, PTD. The environment of Northrend just so much more detailed than that of the Oulands, the zones more developed, though, to be honest, I much prefer Howling Fjord to Borean Tundra in terms of appearance overall, but there is a sheer epic feel of Northrend regardless. As far as that epic feel goes, you can’t beat watching the burning corpses of dragons falling from the sky as they battle overhead in Dragonblight.
The new quest types are definitely interesting, but I’ve found the bulk of them to be very frustrating, things are still pretty buggy. I love that Arthas pops in seemingly everywhere, that a lot of the bosses have lead in storyline quests that explain a) why you want to kill him and b) why he wants to kill you. My only complaint may be that Arthas is a little overused, but by comparison in how many early questlines did you encounter bosses that you’d see in later instances in TBC? Only Panthaleon the Calculator comes to mind, and Teron Gorefiend much later. Thus far, I’ve encountered 3 in Wrath, and I’m probably less than halfway through the content.
I have to agree with Karthas. In Outlands, the sky is very cool, it definitely left an impression of being otherworldly in a way that the quests and instances couldn’t really capture. Also, the Fel Reavers were positively terrifying. I remember first seeing one. I never raided in Vanilla WoW, I came too late, so I was positively stunned at how MASSIVE that thing was. I was shocked when I ran into people actually suggesting that we try to kill 1. The thought was so audacious.
While I did like the design for TBC instances overall better, in that they were much shorter and compact in both length and level range, I do have to say that there was a level of epic proportion that lacked for most TBC instances when compared to Vanilla, and I think at least a measure of it has returned with Wrath.
Gotta admit I also see WotLK as a big improvement over BC. Now I really enjoyed BC too, but the main difference for me was that in BC every zone was “Well it’s pretty cool… but not as cool as Zangarmarsh”. In WotLK every single zone is “ZOMG THIS IS THE BESTEST ZONE EVAR OH WAIT NO I CHANGED MY MIND THIS IS THE BEST ZONE EVER O WAIT-”
if ya get my drift =P
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