It's uncanny how much World of Warcraft Classic continues to feel like a wormhole to a bygone era of gaming. I was certain that the magic of WoW Classic's 2019 launch couldn't be repeated, but I was wrong. After a few hours of grinding out quests, I joined a random group of strangers to take on one of the new dungeons available in Burning Crusade Classic. What should've been a 20-minute run ended up cascading into a four-hour marathon. When I finally slumped into bed at 3 am, I didn't just have some sweet new loot for my undead Warlock, but a whole new guild of friends to play alongside.
Unlike WoW Classic's launch, where most people sat staring at hours-long queues, I've been playing without interruption.
That's the enduring black magic of World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Classic. It's a crucible of soul-crushing grinding and unforgiving combat that smashes players together like atoms, sparking chain reactions that forge new friendships with impressive regularity. But sustaining those ongoing reactions requires an unfathomable sacrifice of time and energy that makes my heart yearn for the years when I was a teenager with all the time in the world. Burning Crusade Classic is awesome, but you'll have to give up a significant chunk of your life to experience all of it.
When I first reviewed WoW Classic in 2019, much of what made it an easy game to recommend was how accessible it was. For just the price of a monthly subscription fee, anyone could start a new character and be transported back to the dawn of Blizzard's foundational MMO. Old Warcraft vets finally got what they'd wanted, while brand-new players could take a virtual tour through one of the most important chapters in PC gaming history. It was an experience that anyone could take something from, regardless of how much time they sunk into it.
Not so with Burning Crusade Classic. To even explore the seven new zones, you'll need a level 58 character that will take casual players months of questing to get. Or you can pay $35 for a ridiculously overpriced, one-time level boost that supplies you with trash-tier equipment and a pittance of TBC classic gold that'll barely help you survive your first few quests in Outlands. I'm not opposed to Blizzard charging for a shortcut, but this feels like paying top-dollar for a historical tour of Rome and then being handed a crumpled-up MapQuest printout and a travel-sized bottle of cheap sunscreen.
It sucks that these daunting entry requirements will inevitably turn so many people away because Burning Crusade Classic is special. It's the moment where World of Warcraft was beginning to transform from a messy experiment into a pop-culture phenomenon that enthralled over a hundred million people, with features and ideas that shaped not just WoW's future, but the entire genre.
After years stuck grinding away in Azeroth, players were thrust through the Dark Portal and into a landscape that felt outrageously impressive for its time. For the most part, Burning Crusade Classic is a faithful recreation of that era—though Blizzard did make more changes based on the community feedback. The big surprise, though, is that so far my foray into Outlands has been shockingly smooth aside from quest zones being too populated (which is expected on launch week). Unlike WoW Classic's launch, where most people sat staring at hours-long queues, I've been playing without interruption.
It's fun to return to this antiquated version of Warcraft and discover so many facets that have remained timeless and fun—and commiserate about those that aren't. Seeing that colossal Fel Reaver stomping across the blood-red fields of Hellfire Peninsula, murdering any player who ventures too close, is still cool as hell. But I could definitely do without waiting five minutes for a specific monster to respawn because someone killed it seconds before I got there.
Outlands is the first time Blizzard's imagination really ran wild in Warcraft, and the result is a spectacular mix of fantasy and science fiction. Enormous steampunk drain pumps heave and chug amid giant blue mushrooms in Zangarmarsh, while a giant moon wreathed in magical wisps hangs over the pastoral hills of Nagrand. It reminds me a lot of The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind—an engrossing and alien landscape that hasn't spoiled with time.
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