I Am Still a Teenage Alpha Tester
So, the alpha is over for the first expansion to the megagame, World of Warcraft, The Burning Crusade and yep, just like last time, I was an alpha tester.
Unfortunately, the election season kept me from trying it out very much, beyond fooling around in the newbie areas for blood elves and draenei and running around the first few areas of Outland on my dwarf hunter.
I will say that it looks like Blizzard has spent a lot of time on the 60+ game, as they were still in the middle of middle-to-early polish on the newbie zones when I got invited into the Friends & Family alpha earlier this fall.
And some of the testing was actually being done in the live game: The much-heralded world PvP (the stuff in Silithus and Eastern Plaguelands) is essentially what you’ll find in the Hellfire Penninsula and elsewhere, but on a larger scale. The Azeroth versions of those PvP objectives were essentially just a proof of concept for the expansion. Unlike in the pre-expansion versions, though, completing the objectives gives characters tokens like they’re used to in battlegrounds which can be used for fabulous prizes familiar to battleground veterans (they range from food and water to potions to items to new tabards).
If you’re planning on avoiding the blood elf and draenei lands when the expansion comes out (I’m guessing in November from what vendors are saying, but I have no 1337 alpha info on this), don’t. Although the Hellfire Peninsula is HUGE and there are more than 40 quests for level 60 characters that I counted, you’ll see pretty much everyone over level 59 in the Horde and Alliance towns in the Hellfire Peninsula at first, and until they start leveling up and spreading out, it’s going to be a logjam. The draenei and blood elf lands, both of which are very neat, can’t possibly be any worse.
(Oh, and if you’re like me, and bought the Collector’s Edition of the regular game, you’ll be glad to know your draenei and blood elf characters can get the CE pets, or at least they could in the alpha. My blood elf warlock ran around with Mini Diablo dogging his heels, which was fitting.)
(There’s also a level 6 or so quest in the draenei starting area that lets anyone ride an elekk, their elephantine mounts, on a timed quest. It’s worth popping over there just to ride what are sure to be the coveted cross-faction mounts on the Alliance side.)
You could certainly run around and pick up the books to raise your skill caps on Cooking, First Aid and Fishing, though. Remember to have your character’s gloves enchanted with +mining, +skinning or +herbalism if you intend to pick up any of the new tradeskill components. Even after you find the trainers to raise those caps, everything I saw required at least 305 in the relevant gathering skill to collect.
As I said previously, I didn’t have time to do any of the dungeons during alpha, unfortunately, but I will say that what I saw of Outland was eyepoppingly gorgeous, lore-tastic for all the Warcraft fans and clearly shows that Blizzard has learned from the past two years of World of Warcraft.
Outland is a bizarre and astonishing place, a mix of nightmare vistas and amazing dreamscapes. If you’ve been tempted to upgrade to a new graphics card, do it. It’s worth being able to slide that clipping bar all the way out just to see the absolutely alien new world.
Expect the transition to the higher levels to be rough in one way, though: You may think your character is the cock of the walk on Azeroth, with his swell raid gear and level 60+ spells and so on, but the bad guys just roaming around in Hellfire Peninsula (to say nothing of the zones beyond) run up to level 75 and their version of the Welcome Wagon isn’t pleasant or sweet.
So clear out your quest logs, max out your pre-expansion skills and get ready to be rocked. From what I saw in my admittedly non-comprehensive tour of Outland, the Burning Crusade is going to be a hoot.
