Far before cheap gripping masts and dedicated flight mounts, there was a time when these things were still dreams. We take you on a multi-part journey into the past and experience together the development of a luxury good into an everyday toy. In the following second part of our series, we reminisce about The Burning Crusade. We’ll continue in a few weeks – if you can’t wait until then, just treat yourself to the latest issue of PC Games MMORE with the full story.

Probably one of the most epic moments was the first step through the Dark Portal into an unknown and broken world that greeted us with advancing demon hordes and bloodthirsty pit lords. It only took a few quests before it became clear how important air warfare would be in the future. Armed with explosives, we circled the Burning Legion camps on the backs of automatic griffins and bombed their portals; tasks like this awaited us later in abundance, for example in the mountains of Blade’s Edge. And admittedly, apart from dropping the bombs, these missions hardly differed from a normal Windrider trip; the route was predetermined and the flying machine ran on autopilot. The big difference from Classic, however, was that right at the start of the expansion, players got a glimpse of what Outland would be like – on the back of their own flying beast! In the following second part of our series, we reminisce about The Burning Crusade. The impatient among you can order the current issue of the in our Computec store PC Games MMORE from May 21 and enjoy the full review right away.

The great dream of flying

Those who reached the end of the level flagpole not only got access to various dungeons and raids (or were allowed to tackle the quest series required for them). At level 70, the dream of flying came true, as long as you had the necessary change in your pocket. Flying instructors and mount dealers took nearly 1,000 gold pieces from us to teach us the basics of the new art of riding and to put what we had learned into practice on the back of our own feathered friend. The feeling when you take off for the first time: indescribable!

The fact that we were only flying at 60 percent speed didn’t change anything. But that was all we could do at the beginning, and sometimes – especially on longer distances – we were really glad not to fall asleep from boredom and fall out of the saddle. But that wasn’t the point at all, because flying wasn’t supposed to be primarily for comfort, but as a means to an end. If you wanted to upgrade to 280 percent airspeed and put an epic flying beast in your garage, like the Porsche of flying mounts, you had to shell out another 5,000 gold pieces over the counter…. 5,000 – a multiple of the price of an epic ground mount!

Opening up new territory

Being able to fly, whether fast or slow, was a basic requirement from level 70 onward to even tackle much of the game’s content. Those who didn’t take off were denied access to some areas of Outland, including Skettis, Kil’jaeden’s Throne with the world boss Kazzak, the ogre-populated mountain range around Shattrath, the Plateau of Elements and the Twilight Heights in Nagrand, Razorthorn Ridge in northern Terokkar, all the instances around Tempest Keep, and of course the fabled Netherwing Shard. Those who showed enough stamina, completed tons of dailies, delivered dragon eggs, and emerged victorious from various flying races against NPCs like Mulverick and Ichiman (ring a bell?) were allowed to show off one of six extraordinary Nether Dragons at the end.

And when you chased it in loops (!) through the skies above Shattrath, you caused more of a stir than a villain dressed entirely in T-6 with two legendary Warglaives! We don’t even need to talk about Al’ar’s Ashes, the burning phoenix – the Firebird of Kael’thas is still one of the rarest flying mounts in all of WoW. But even to defeat Kael’thas at all, the raid had to fly or glide weightlessly through the blood elf’s throne room in the final stage. The engineers, on the other hand, were even allowed to build two different helicopters themselves, although to this day they are only allowed to operate them themselves. In any case, one thing was crystal clear: the introduction of aviation was a complete success, which was to be celebrated even more excessively in WotLK.

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade

Burning Crusade has the maximum level in WoW at 70 and brings 2 new playable races (Draenei& Blood Elves). In addition, there is a new continent: The Sheol

The Burning Crusade is the first expansion for the successful MMORPG World of Warcraft (WoW) from the developer studio Blizzard. The add-on introduces a new continent called Outland. There are also new races. The Blood Elves for the Horde and the Draenei for the Alliance. The classes Paladin and Shaman are now also playable for both factions. Furthermore, the expansion brings an increase in the level limit from 60 to 70 as well as flying mounts.

World of Warcraft (WoW)

The online role-playing game World of Warcraft (WoW) was released in Europe in 2005 and is an MMO with a subscription payment model. In WoW, players can complete tasks with their characters to improve their hero and meet like-minded players. There are thirteen different races to choose from when selecting a character – six of which belong to only one faction each – as well as eleven classes. In World of Warcraft, players have the opportunity to join the Horde or the Alliance, complete missions and quests with their character in the rich world, and adventure with other heroes in instanced areas for five, ten, and even 25 players. In addition, characters can take up professions, collect pets and mounts, compete against opposing players in battlegrounds and arenas, or simply unwind in the main cities and chat with their guildmates. Guides, news, videos, screenshots, reports and more about World of Warcraft and The Burning Crusade are collected on our topic pages.

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