The Burning Crusade: how not to make a game expansion
Written by Jem Matzan
Jun 23, 2007 at 12:27 AM
Usually an expansion pack to an existing game is a way of adding to the existing material with the hope that people who have played the original game all the way through will rekindle their interest through the expansion. This has been done successfully in the past with successful expansions like WW2: 1946 for Aces of the Pacific; the many official and unofficial add-ons, maps, and game modifications for the Unreal Tournament series; Warcraft II and III's expansions; and the Grand Theft Auto and Halo add-ons and expansions. With a wide range of successful projects to take lessons from, you'd think that the usually outstanding production team at Blizzard Entertainment would have thought a little more carefully before going ahead with World of Warcraft's first expansion pack, The Burning Crusade. Don't get me wrong -- it's got a lot of great qualities, and if you have been playing WoW for more than a year, TBC was practically a revelation. But the purpose of an expansion pack is to enhance or build upon a game, not to invalidate or otherwise trample on it, thereby ruining the original WoW content for new players. Unfortunately, The Burning Crusade did exactly that. Below is a list of the major new features in TBC, how they wrecked World of Warcraft, and some suggestions for repairing the damage.
World of Warcraft overview
World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) based in a Tolkien-like fantasy universe of elves, dwarves, humans, orcs, and other races involved in unending global warfare. The story has been developed over a period of years, starting with the real-time strategy game Warcraft, and progressing with Warcraft II and III. Players start out at level 1 and, by killing wandering monsters and completing quests, they gain experience and skills and advance to new levels. As their characters become stronger, they're encouraged to move on to new areas where the monsters are tougher and the tasks more complex. The maximum level is 60. Although experienced players frequently breeze through from level 1 to 60 in a few weeks, first-time players generally require months of casual play in order to reach the top.
Aside from normal gameplay, players can form groups to take on dungeons and raids as a team. A dungeon typically requires a group of 4 or 5, though if you're near the top of the level recommendation for a dungeon, you might be able to get away with a group of 2 or 3. Raids, on the other hand, require larger, more organized groups of 10, 20, or 40 players to be successful. A raid takes a lot of organization and teamwork; usually players will use third-party chat applications like Ventrilo to communicate via voice chat instead of trying to use the text interface. The most prestigious and difficult raids require "attunements" -- a long and tedious series of steps that usually requires building up your reputation with a certain faction of non-playing characters.
The Burning Crusade expansion overview
The Burning Crusade expansion was released to great fanfare. People went out and stood in line for an hour or more -- many of them out in cold weather, to buy it on the day of release, and paid as much as or more than the cost of the original World of Warcraft game. While periodic game patches provided regular updates and occasional additions to the original World of Warcraft game, The Burning Crusade added a gigantic amount of new content and expanded capabilities:
The level cap is raised from 60 to 70.
Skill caps are raised from 300 to 375.
Two new character races: Draenei for the Alliance, and Blood Elves for the Horde.
Two new starting areas and capital cities, one for each race. The Draenei have the Bloodmyst and Azuremyst islands, and the crashed Exodar spaceship as a city. The Blood Elves have Eversong Woods and the Ghostlands, and the half-destroyed Silvermoon City as their capital.
A new world for players level 58 and above, called The Outlands, including several new dungeons and one new raid.
Flying mounts are available for level 70 players, but only while in The Outlands.
A new trade skill: Jewelcrafting.
Dozens of new items, weapons, armor, and skill recipes.
Two new level 70 PvP battlegrounds: The Arena for team deathmatch competition, and The Eye of the Storm for objective-based team play.
The problems
Unfortunately, the new content has led to a lot of chronic problems with the WoW/TBC game. Basically the problems boil down to one specific theme: poor scalability. A lack of consideration for how the content introduced in The Burning Crusade would affect World of Warcraft has ruined the original game's experience. Let's take it point by point according to the new features listed above.
The level cap is raised from 60 to 70
On its face, this is a good idea. It allows people who reached level 60 a long time ago to once again advance their best characters through another 10 ranks. There are several big problems with allowing players to gain another 10 levels -- effectively doubling their HP and mana, increasing skills and stats by 16% or more, and offering them weapons and armor that can be more than twice as powerful than before -- though. The first is that the NPC guards in the "old world" of Azeroth have not increased commensurately in level and skill, thereby enabling a whole new era of PvP griefing in Azeroth, even and especially for players who don't even have The Burning Crusade expansion. Level 70 players are now so powerful that there is no longer a significant threat from guards in neutral cities like Everlook, Gadgetzan, and Booty Bay. Hunters can 1- or 2-shot another player, then feign death to escape the guards. Rogues can sap you repeatedly without any attention from the guards, forcing you to log out in order to escape them. You're powerless to retaliate, because the neutral guards will see yours as the first act of aggression and promptly kill you while your rogue opponent emotes in your general direction. On PvP servers, if you thought the bored high-level players were a pain in the ass, wait until you see them at level 70. Not only do they kill players dozens of levels below them in one shot, but they'll take down the nearest village as well.
Before you respond with something ridiculous like "QQ," you should understand that the point of making town guards powerful in the first place was to provide a penalty for acting like an ass in neutral cities. Plot-wise, the Steamwheedle Cartel doesn't want you causing unrest and interrupting business in their towns. Game-wise, the designers did not intend you to be able to easily grief other players in neutral towns; the rest of the world on a PvP realm may be fair game, but there are supposed to be places where you have a measure of safety against high level players who have nothing better to do than make the game miserable for you.
The fix: The easy way to fix this problem is to raise the level of every neutral and faction guard by 10 levels. That'll balance out the game as was originally intended. Perhaps the concept of dishonorable kills should be reintroduced as well; the incentive of the PvP arena for level 70 players is not enough to keep the griefers away, mostly because griefers can't compete with serious players of comparable level.
The new jewelcrafting skill, new recipes for existing skills, and skill caps are raised from 300 to 375
Like with level caps, on its face this is a great idea. It allows people who have every possible recipe from the original game to go out and find or earn new ones. But like with all other things associated with TBC, there is a dark side that overshadows it -- and this one is the most pervasive.
I'm talking about the fact that old WoW content is now obsolete and ignored. In this case, all those faction recipes that you worked hard to get from groups like the Cenarion Circle, Argent Dawn, and Thorium Brotherhood are now impractical to make, impossible to sell, and overshadowed by low-level Outlands gear that is easier to obtain and cheaper to buy or craft. All those times you ran Molten Core and Onyxia's Lair have been totally wasted.
The other half of the trade skill debacle is the havoc that jewelcrafting wreaked on the WoW economy. Prices for ore, metal bars, and especially gems skyrocketed with the introduction of jewelcrafting. While this makes it more difficult to level your jewelcrafting skills than you may have anticipated, it totally screws people who have recently taken up nearly all of the other extant trade skills. The dramatic rise in gem and ore prices have driven the cost up on all crafted items that require them. The worst hit came to blacksmithing, which is now significantly more expensive to level than before because you're more or less forced to do all of your own mining.
The fix: The problem stems from the fact that a new skill that requires a lot of ore and gems was introduced, but ore and gem drops and caches have not been increased commensurately. Demand was increased, but supply remained the same. Perhaps if ore veins were more commonly found or more plentiful in their gem production, the economy could go back to pre-TBC prices.
The Draenei quest line ends here
Two new races: Draenei for the Alliance, and Blood Elves for the Horde, and two new starting areas and capital cities, one for each race. The Draenei have the Bloodmyst and Azuremyst islands, and the crashed Exodar spaceship as a city. The Blood Elves have Eversong Woods and the Ghostlands, and the half-destroyed Silvermoon City as their capital
The new scenery and music in the Blood Elf and Draenei starting areas is spectacular -- arguably better than the majority of the old WoW game content. The character classes are well-balanced, have great new racial abilities, and open up the possibility of creating a paladin class on the Horde, and the shaman class on Alliance. Previously these classes were exclusive to the other faction.
So what's the problem? Well first of all, the story and quest lines are incomplete. When you finish the natural quest progression in Bloodmyst and Ghostlands, you're more or less dumped into old Azeroth. The new character races do not have a lifetime quest progression like most of the old classes do; you don't go naturally from one area to another and another until you find yourself walking into dungeons and raids. Instead, at around level 22 you've conquered your starting areas and are shoehorned into the middle of the level 20-ish Night Elf or Undead quest progressions in Ashenvale or Hillsbrad. As a Draenei you are literally dropped off on the Auberdine docks and expected to find your way in the rest of the world as though you'd played this game a few times before. This is not expansion content so much as it is an insiders celebration of long-term subscribers who have been dying to play a new race and class.
If you need to train in jewelcrafting, you're forced to make an unusually long journey back to The Exodar or Silvermoon City because that's where the only trainers are in Azeroth. Imagine you're questing in Thousand Needles and want to train some new jewelcrafting abilities. You have a 10-15 minute journey to Silvermoon or Exodar. The new classes are almost as bad. If you're a Draenei shaman, you have to go all the way back to The Exodar for class training (technically there's a shaman trainer in Stormwind, but you have to know that he's there in order to find him). The Horde are luckier -- there are paladin trainers in Undercity and Orgrimmar as well as Silvermoon City, which can be easily reached from a city-to-city portal in the Ruins of Lordaeron above Undercity as opposed to The Exodar, which requires flying to Auberdine, waiting for a ship that takes a really long time to arrive, then walking the last 1000 yards or so to The Exodar.
The new starting areas may be interesting and have a lot of quests, but they don't offer any new dungeon instances. Technically there is one called Zul Aman in Ghostlands, but it is not yet activated as of this writing, and is intended for level 70 players. There is no Draenei or Blood Elf equivalent of the Deadmines, Blackfathom Deeps, Ragefire Chasm, or the Wailing Caverns. If you want to run those "beginner" instances, you have to either abandon your race's starting area and join the old Alliance or Horde, or you have to get involved with the group matchmaking system as early as possible and hope someone summons you. If you ignore the old "beginner" instances until you're out of your starting area, you've probably missed your chance to do them.
The fix: The solution here -- and perhaps for other problems as well -- is to fully embrace TBC as a part of WoW. Put jewelcrafting trainers in every city, and make it just as easy to find shaman and paladin trainers as it is to find rogue or warrior instructors. Also, create more Draenei- and Blood Elf-specific content so that each has a natural quest progression through the game. A Human or Orc character can follow each quest all the way up to Onyxia's Lair and Naxxramis and beyond, but Draenei and Blood Elves are expected to sort of tailgate the Night Elf or Undead quests. That's not really a true expansion of the game, is it?
A new world for players level 58 and above, called The Outlands, including several new dungeons and one new raid.
It makes sense to create a new land for high-level players to gain experience and get new gear. The design of The Outlands is wonderful -- great new art, music, and new races and monsters to experience. The new dungeons are pretty cool, too, and offer a decent challenge to players of every skill level.
So what's the problem? Well, let's put it this way: Do you remember your first Onyxia raid? Do you remember how there used to be all kinds of raids on weekends -- Zul Gurub, Onyxia's Lair, Ahn Qiraj, Naxxramis, Blackwing Lair, Dire Maul, and world bosses like Emeriss? If you remember those days, then you're also aware of the fact that they are over. This may not be a problem for you if you've run the old Azeroth raids and high-level instances ad nauseum, but what about people who started playing just before or since TBC was released? They have to fight to find 5-man groups for Blackrock Depths, let alone 10- or 20-man raids like Zul Gurub or Onyxia's Lair (which used to be a 40-man raid before TBC). It used to be that you couldn't walk into Stormwind City on a weekend without seeing at least one dragon head hanging from the rafters. Now if you see the Rallying Cry of the Dragonslayer buff, it's almost a spectacle -- "Whoa -- someone ran Ony!"
There are two main problems with TBC's murder of original WoW content. First, most of the old raids require that you be near level 60, at which point most people now head for The Outlands instead of the old raids because Hellfire Peninsula offers more money, experience, and better weapons and armor than any Azeroth raid. It's widely known that the "green" gear you get from the first 10 quests in Hellfire Peninsula is likely to replace epic raid and PvP gear from Azeroth. So why work to get the old stuff anymore? Secondly, the bulk of the people who used to organize and run raids on Azeroth are now doing Karazhan, Caverns of Time, and Black Temple, and are no longer interested in doing the old raids, leaving the pool of interested parties at a minimum. It also eliminates most of the raid experience, so rather than blunder through BRD trying to find the Molten Core instance, it's much easier for level 58 players to head to The Outlands and find more satisfying solo or 5-man dungeon battles.
The fix: One way to solve this problem is to up the level requirement for The Dark Portal to 62, and prevent mages and warlocks from being able to magically transport people below that level to The Outlands. This would force people to work through the old content before going on to the new stuff. Secondly, the old epic gear drops need to be made more common and less labor-intensive. That way when you enter Hellfire Peninsula at level 62, you've been using your epic raid gear for at least 2 levels before it is replaced by Outlands quest rewards.
Flying mounts are available for level 70 players, but only while in The Outlands
How often have you wished that you could redirect your gryphon or bat because you clicked the wrong destination or need to go someplace else while in the middle of a long flight? Well in The Outlands, if you reach level 70 and pay a metric assload of money, you can train to ride a flying mount. Not only is this a cool way to travel, but it also unlocks a few interesting new places that you cannot reach on foot. It sounds about as great as it actually is. There's just one problem: If you die while in the air -- not hard to do on a PvP server -- your spirit will be unable to reach your corpse, thereby forcing you to use a Spirit Healer and take the resulting debuff and gear durability hit.
The only instance in the new starting areas is closed
The fix: Make player corpses fall to the ground if players die in the air. If you jump, your character falls to the ground, but if you die while flying, your corpse hangs in midair. It doesn't take a genius to see the consistency problem here. WoW is not bound by the laws of Earth physics, but it needs to follow its own physical rules consistently. A second option is to give ghosts the ability to float up into the air, and allow players to resuscitate on their flying mounts.
Dozens of new items, skill recipes, weapons, and armor
With new lands and higher levels comes more stuff to buy and outfit our characters with. Ideally, though, adding new items should not wreck the existing economy. The effect of TBC's new items in the old Azeroth economy has been disastrous.
As mentioned previously, jewelcrafting's material requirements have made the cost of all other crafted items rise significantly. In order to afford to make or buy those items, you need more money. This isn't a problem if you have TBC, because every quest you get in The Outlands offers several gold, plus a new item worth about the same amount, plus whatever you got from the process of performing the quest tasks. It works out to 10-20g per Hellfire Peninsula and Zangarmarsh quest, and more for the higher-level areas. So if you're above level 58 and need some cash, earning it is much easier than ever before. And if you want to seed your new alternate character with some startup money, it's much less painful to mail yourself 100g or more. Unfortunately, the introduction of all this gold caused auction house prices to skyrocket. The more you have available to spend, the higher the price you'll pay for something you want. The raw materials still have to be collected, though, and that is one thing money can't always buy, so the price of crafted goods is guaranteed to stay as high as possible as long as there are material shortages. If you don't have TBC, or if you are just starting out in World of Warcraft, you are totally screwed when it comes to auction house prices because you have no way to earn the big bucks.
The shortage of raw materials presents yet another difficulty -- that of "farming" in The Outlands. Netherweb Spider Silk is an excellent example. This item is required in quantity to make a number of high-dollar items, most notably an 18-slot item bag that sells like mad in the auction house. The only place to get this silk outside of a high-level instance like the Black Morass or Karazhan is in Terrokar Forest, from level 64 spiders. Naturally, there are some quests in this area for level 63-67 players. Those quests become very difficult to complete when the area is saturated with level 70 silk farmers who easily round up and kill the spiders, and on PvP servers, they kill the lower level players as well. If you thought the practice of "farming" materials was annoying in the original WoW, it's gone to a whole new level of annoyance in TBC.
Lastly, there aren't enough new items to cover the expanded stats of a level 70 player. The highest level healing potion you can get is designed for level 55 players. Back when 60 was the level cap, this was acceptable. Now, however, it's not uncommon for a well-geared player to have twice as many health points as he had at level 60, so those level 55 health potions are puny and ineffective. Ditto the bandages -- though two more bandage levels have been added, they don't repair enough damage to be worthwhile to a well-geared level 70 player.
The fix: The most obvious solution is to make raw materials easier to obtain. Another option is to reduce the number of materials required for high-dollar recipes. It would also make sense to give more consideration to where materials are found and where players go to quest. Overlapping the two might be fun for high-level players who have had more time to level and equip their characters, but it's no fun for virtually all other paying customers when a quest area is saturated with high-level farmers. Lastly, there needs to be a whole new class of items designed for players who are at or near the new level cap. The old level 55-60 stuff just doesn't cut it anymore.
Two new level 70 PvP battlegrounds: The Arena for team deathmatch competition, and The Eye of the Storm for objective-based team play
The concept of PvP battlegrounds began with capture the flag in Warsong Gulch, and expanded to Arathi Basin and Alterac Valley from there. Those games are still around, and people still play them. With TBC comes Eye of the Storm, which is Warsong Gulch plus Arathi Basin -- capture the flag with objectives to capture. Nothing new there. But why play EotS anyway, when the top-tier PvP armor and weapon rewards take weeks to accumulate enough honor points to buy, and are nowhere near the quality of Arena or tier-2 and above raid gear?
Speaking of the Arena, it's a small deathmatch-style battleground for premade groups of 2, 3, or 5 people. Like a guild, you have to pay a fee and have already interested parties to start an Arena team. The rewards for cashing in your Arena points are significant, but take a lot of playing to obtain. The real problem is not grinding the Arena; it's the inequality of the Arena reward gear. Rogues seem particularly affected by inappropriately configured Arena armor rewards, so much so that they are all but totally absent from 5v5 teams.
This is a larger problem than just the Arena, and affects more than just rogues (a class that only does well when their opponents don't know they're coming). It's really an extension of the aforementioned scaling inequalities that each character class is experiencing with the upgraded level cap. There have been two major attempts to fix some of the problems with post-release patches, but most of the original issues remain. Most notably, the "bastard" talent specialties of every character class, such as subtlety rogues, enhancement shamans, arcane mages, and retribution paladins, have been neglected and left to rot. All of the high-end Arena and raid gear for every class caters to its two primary specialties and ignores the third.
The fix: First of all, there needs to be better Eye of the Storm rewards. You could kill two birds with one stone here by offering upgraded EotS gear that is aimed specifically at the "bastard" talent specs listed above. Secondly, the Arena needs to be reconfigured to level the playing field for all classes and races so that those that were never meant to excel at dueling can compete.
Conclusions
The Burning Crusade added a lot of great new art, music, and functionality to World of Warcraft. Unfortunately, it also trampled on the original game to the point of making almost half of it totally irrelevant. The point of TBC was to continue to make the game enjoyable for existing long-time subscribers, but it came at a terrible price for both new and old players alike. Viewed in isolation, The Burning Crusade is wonderful. But when you look at it in the big picture, considering the game it was designed to enhance and support, it is a complete failure at enhancing WoW. If World of Warcraft had been totally reworked to accommodate for TBC, this article would have been a proper review instead of a long examination of the expansion's failures.
It's not too late to fix The Burning Crusade, though at this point I think the only way to really solve all of the problems that it introduced is to make it a requirement for all World of Warcraft subscribers. Only then can you modify the original WoW content to scale properly with the new TBC material. I hold out hope that the expansion will improve with time and patches, but part of me worries that the decision makers at Blizzard Entertainment think of The Burning Crusade as a financial success instead of a material failure.
Articles 
