World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade E3 Previews

A handful of E3 previews for Blizzard’s World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade expansion pack have surfaced on the web. The first is at GameSpot:

We also had a chance to take a look at some of the areas in the Outland, the huge new region that the expansion pack will add to the game. The Outland will be accessible by The Dark Portal, a magical rift in space and time created by the sage Medivh (who prophesied the catastrophic events in Warcraft III) and will house a number of highly varied areas. In fact, even though you’d expect the mysterious Outland to be nothing but barren wastes ravaged by demonic hordes, Kaplan suggested that the new area will actually host a great variety of different environments, including a lush, green grassland called Nagrand–the ancestral home of the once-peaceful orc tribes. However, although Outland will offer new dungeon content for hardcore fans looking for a challenge, pretty much all of the Outland’s other areas will be sprawling, continuous outdoor areas that will allow plenty of room for many different adventuring parties. To navigate these vast new areas, the expansion will add flying mounts, such as winged dragonlike characters that can run along the ground even more quickly than the fastest epic mounts in the game and also take to the air at any time and fly anywhere. Though you’ll need to have a character at level 70 to get your own flying mount, you’ll enjoy increased freedom of movement–and apparently, Blizzard’s content team is also designing out-of-the-way pockets of content and monster camps to be discovered by adventurous players who don’t mind exploring the new areas.

The second is at IGN PC:

Speaking of Blood Elves, Kaplan was our guide through Silvermoon, their capital city in the section of Azeroth northeast of the Plaguelands. It’s split in half by Arthas’ path of destruction en route to the Sunwell (covered in Warcraft III). The eastern section is populated while the western section is for questing. From there, we headed south (with Kaplan darting about with administrator commands — if you happened to be playing the game at the booth downstairs, around 5:00 PM, and noticed that night suddenly to day, well, he has the powah!). Here he mentioned Deathholme, a Scourge stronghold, and Tranquillian, a Blood Elf town. Then we ported to Zul’Aman, a forest troll raid dungeon for level 70 characters (the expansion pack increases the cap by 10). Since the Blood Elves are cut off from the rest of civilization, the Undercity (headed by a former Blood Elf) created a two-way permanent portal to Silvermoon, allowing quick access to the rest of the world.

The third is at GameSpy:

In terms of the starting quests available to the Draenei, there probably isn’t much outside of what you’ve come to expect from WoW. Storywise, the Draenei are struggling to recover from the catastrophic crash on the alien world of Azeroth, and it only just happened — the first questgiver you encounter is actually keeled over in pain. The early quests you embark on share the same tone; the first one you get requires you to harvest “stim” from the winged lizards native to the crash site in order to recharge Exodar’s damaged healing crystals. The very next sends you around the starting area to find wounded Draenei and heal them with a powered crystal. It’s like the “Lazy Peons” quest that Horde players get in the Valley of Trials, but with a merciful bent.

And the fourth is at MMORPG.com:

Jewelcrafting is the new profession available to players. There will be lots of new recipes for players in every profession (including twenty slot bags for tailors). Jewelcrafting allows players to make rings, amulets, trinkets and gems. The gems can be put into slots that pieces will have to give players a small boost to abilities. The chest piece we got to see had three slots for warriors to use. The system allows you to add gems to the armor or weapon and boost abilities. If you remember the Diablo system this is similar. The good feature is you have plenty of ways to spec before you commit to a gem socketed item. Also if you every want to change the gems you can, only the old gems will be destroyed when the new ones are put in. This feature gives crafters much more to think about and players much more to focus on in regards to re-spec.