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We've been doing the very same thing over the last few days, checking out all the new surprises The Burning Crusade has in store. Our initial impressions are, not surprisingly, very positive. As with Sony's recent Echoes of Faydwer expansion, The Burning Crusade offers a nice balance of entry-level and veteran content. Two new races, each with their own distinct starting zones, allow new players (or those who want to start over again) the chance to jump in and get an entirely original and satisfying experience right from day one. Old timers who have been bumping their head against the game's current level cap will find extra room for advancement in terms of 10 new levels, new areas, new equipment and new crafting options.

We have received quite a few reports regarding the Rank 12 Frostbolt not doing enough damage when compared to Rank 10 and 11. To address this issue we plan to change Rank 12 in the near future, hopefully to be implemented with the next patch already.

Frostbolt rank 12 should get improved and receive approximately 20-25 additional damage points for max damage.

We will be issuing rolling restarts for all realms tomorrow January 20 at 4:00 AM PST. We anticipate each realm to be affected for less than 15 minutes during these restarts.

The expansion is, in short, grand and almost overwhelming in its scope. Sixteen hours of play, usually a reasonable volume of time to get a firm grasp on even epic games, grants me only the barest glimpse of what awaits. To speak in an informed manner on the full scope of the expansion, to be able to talk about flying mounts, and socketed items, and jewelcrafting, and the new epic raids, and the full potential of the new classes, and the new PvP areas, and the new post-60 talents and abilities and the hundreds or thousands of tiny Blizzard touches that consistently elevates their products above most others will require hundreds of hours on top of the hundreds of hours countless players have already invested.

But, this first impression is incredibly positive, and fairly representative of the mood of the player base. Server stability and population maintenance in the aftermath of the launch was near flawless, a starling result for a game trying to manage eight million players. The party atmosphere that anxiously awaited the opening of the Dark Portal hasn't really abated, and the reaction to the new worlds of warcraft has, it seems, exceeded the incredible expectations of many players.

It seems that The Burning Crusade is exactly what many players hoped it might be. Maybe even better.

The final aspect added to WoW with Burning Crusade is probably the most valuable to most veteran players. The addition of new, high end content, that will take veteran level 60 characters to level 70 and the addition of dungeons to match. The Outland is a violent place and it is also home to three of the four new dungeon zones that range in level from 60 to 70. Many of the dungeons are split into separate areas, which are intended for 5 man teams of the appropriate level. There are, however, a couple of exceptions. One of the four raiding areas of Coilfang Reservoir is a 20 man raid zone as well as the 10 man level 70 raid zone included in Karazhan, located deep within Deadwind Pass. The first raid zone players will have a chance to experience is Hellfire Citadel. Designed for 5 man teams, the three wings of the Citadel will set the pace for what is to be expected in the later Outland raid zones.

Sleep is for the weak

Burning Crusade offers a considerable list of additions to an already epic MMO. With the coming generation of new MMOs around the corner, and the next generation of MMO players to play them, Burning Crusades will ensure that Blizzard's World of Warcraft will remain a competitive and enjoyable title in the coming years.

This is currently a bug. There is no available method to acquire this item at the moment. We'll work on implementing a method as soon as we can.

We are changing the way we process our free character moves and paid character transfers. Players will now be able to queue into the system for the destination realm they wish and continue to play that character until the specified period of time the move will occur. Characters will only be moved after they are logged out of the game. Moves will occur each day from 12:01 AM PST until 2:00 PM PST.

In the event that a realm meets our transfer goals before the scheduled end date the transfers to that realm will be disabled. We highly recommend that if you are planning to transfer that you do so at your earliest convenience.

You can begin a free character move or paid character transfer from Account Management here. We would like to encourage players to post any questions that you may have in this thread and we will do our best to answer them for you.

We're not sure why we're running this competition, as the people most likely to enter are too engrossed in exploring the fantastical new landscape of the Outlands to even notice. That, or they're passed out under the desk, finally catching some z's after a thirty-six hour Level 70 push. However, if you're one of the few people on the Net not totally hooked on World of Warcraft, and its new expansion pack The Burning Crusade, do your WoW-playing friends a favour and let them know about our Journals of Burning Crusade competition.

Thank you for your interest in testing WoW. We will be announcing a new test build sometime in the future.

We don't have any plans to add any new classes to the game at this time, however it's always a possibility for the future. With the Burning Crusade expansion we were very interested in continuing our efforts to balance and polish the existing classes.

Monday's midnight openings across Europe were well-attended as players rushed to get copies of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade. Some were even lucky enough to talk to our developers in the different cities and get their copy signed. Share the excitement of the release of The Burning Crusade in Europe and have a look at our photos from the various Blizzard signings.

The following realms are recommended when starting out new characters:

UI Mods

MarsMod by MarsMod (Combat) -- This collection includes the following AddOns. * AaaDebug...

Titan KTM by wilsonza (UI Mods) -- Puts an icon at the top right of your screen that toggles th...

AutoInvite2 by Matthias Fechner (Burning Crusade) -- With the help of this mod it is possible to invite a complet...

SuperMacro by Aquendyn (UI Mods) -- The SuperMacro addon provides a very much improved interface...

Pro-G: Was there anything left out of The Burning Crusade the team had hoped would be included?

JL: There were a few systems that we weren't able to complete that we did think were going to be good; for example the hero quest was something we wanted to put in, but we just didn't have the resources. But I can't think of anything off hand that didn't get killed pretty early that we got very far with and said no; not that we haven't done that previously, I just can't think of any Burning Crusade specifics.

Here's an example. With Hellfire Peninsula, basically the entire thing was quested and all the monsters were put down and we just ripped everything up and did it again because we weren't happy with it. And then we did that again. We got to point when we were working and we were just like, "no I don't think so." If we're not happy with something, we'll just keep iterating on it until it's good.

These amazing toys based on the world’s most popular MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game…say the letters, don’t try to pronounce it) are made by DC Direct! But, uh…doesn’t DC Direct usually do figures based on DC Comics for the direct market? Isn’t that where the name comes from? Yeah, but what’s in a name? These are mass-market toys that have absolutely nothing to do with Batman. How did this happen? What is this computer game that millions of people play together? What’s next for the toyline? For the answers to all these questions, check the next issue of Toyfare. Meanwhile, feast your eyes!