Update: It’s been almost two months since my review of the first few weeks of Burning Crusade Classic. A lot has happened. Original: Thanks to vacation, our editor Karsten has been able to spend a lot of time with WoW: Burning Crusade Classic in the last few weeks. In this article he summarizes how he experienced the first few weeks on Outland – including drama, records and crisp instances.
Update August 23:
It’s been almost two months since my review of the first few weeks of Burning Crusade Classic. In terms of kill times, a lot has happened since the launch weeks:
A Russian guild was able to knock Raufgar down in just nine seconds and defeat Gruul in just 1:53.
A few days ago, a Chinese guild mastered the fight against Magtheridon in 2.05 minutes (which is possible if you simply channel the ban phases one after the other: the banned boss takes significantly more damage).
And how fast can you purge Karazhan? Well, the US guild SPACEFORCE currently holds the speed record with 45:22 minutes (with Nightbane and Nethergroll).
I could also tell a lot of new things from the drama front, which reminds me strongly of the year 2007 and which once again showed me how fragile a guild community that appears to be doing well is, and how quickly it can happen that something like that can happen a social framework falls apart. The good news is that we’re still early in the content and there’s still plenty of time to prepare the roster for the Phase 2 Raid Challenges.
Despite the increasing number of characters in the raid area (here the statistics from the last ID / and here the numbers from the beginning of August ) I also notice more and more every day that many players log in less often. The main character is certainly not only ready for phase 2 for me, but one or the other twink could start immediately in the storm fortress and in the snake shrine. As far as I’m concerned, Blizzard could slowly give the upcoming update a release date.
How has your experience with TBC Classic been lately? Are you still having fun? Do you only log in for the raids? Did you end your TBC career prematurely? Tell us in the comments!
Original message from June 21:
Today is my first day at work after two weeks of vacation. Two weeks in which I spent an hour or two with WoW: Burning Crusade Classic. Exactly how many is difficult to say. On my main character, Creep, the timer for “Time played at this level (70)” reads 4 days, 1 hour, and 49 minutes. In the meantime, however, I’ve also leveled my priest again and again, and also spent a little time with my profession twinks.
I was there back in 2007 when the Dark Portal opened for the first time . And thanks to the beta and my work on the countless guides for TBC Classic , I was able to refresh or even correct many memories from back then in advance. So I knew quite well what to expect. But I was also partly surprised. About my personal insights from the first few weeks with WoW (buy now) : Burning Crusade Classic should go in the following.
WoW: TBC Classic – The records of the professional guilds
Even before my vacation, on June 3rd, I was able to report that the entire raid content of TBC Classic Phase 1 had already been mastered. The first level 70 character was already available after 13 hours. In the meantime, the ambitious guilds are outdoing each other almost every day with their remarkable speed kill times. Send High King Maulgar to nirvana in just 16 seconds? The EU guild Resist did just that on June 17th ( go to the log ).
The best guilds currently need almost four minutes for Magtheridon. The current record for Gruul is 2:48 minutes. And for all the bosses in Karazhan, the best guilds will take less than 70 minutes . These are blatant numbers, behind which there is sometimes a lot more time and effort than many people believe. The amount of time and energy that Progress players have invested in order to get as many players as possible to 70 as quickly as possible and to secure the first kills in TBC Classic is unbelievable.
WoW: TBC Classic for mere mortals
However, the above times and achievements have little to do with how most guilds experience TBC Classic. Using my guild as an example, even now we still have the occasional player who just leveled or has leveled their first character to level 70. If you level up normally, with quests and semi-regular dungeon visits, then it just takes time to reach the new maximum level.
There are also differences in the endgame experience. Our four Karazhan groups were able to knock out the prince across the board, but Nightbane is still standing almost everywhere. We are partly still attached to the quest line in order to be able to summon the dragon at all, partly we got the full pound on our mouths with setups with which we could easily defeat all other bosses (two healers, several melee fighters).
We had already talked about that in BuffedCast: The beta already showed that Nightbane is of a completely different caliber than the rest of the Karazhan bosses. A lot of damage hits the raid, especially in the flight phase. Also because the skeletons emit an aura of damage that can kill melee fighters in no time. A similar challenge awaits the guilds in the 25-player area. The optimal setup for Gruul’s Lair is completely different than the optimal setup for Magtheridon’s Lair. For the latter demon, you usually pack significantly more healers, and – depending on the tactics – one or two more tanks can’t hurt.
I was already expecting all of this thanks to the beta. I was surprised how crisp some of the heroic dungeons turn out to be. The first time I visited Arcatraz on Heroic I had a particularly strong memory. How hard some of the Trash enemies hit the tank. How deadly it is when an invisible succubus unexpectedly joins a fight. And how hard the mind flaying of the final boss ticks on the victim. Once our druid healer was targeted it was a wipe because it couldn’t survive the cast attack even with full HoT palette. As frustrating as that one run was, it’s great that TBC Classic is already offering a noticeably greater challenge than WoW Classic in Phase 1.
WoW: TBC Classic – dramas like 2007
Do you remember my special The special challenges for guild leaders in TBC Classic ? I touched on one point from the article above: the different raid challenge requirements for raid setup. But another point has also come true. The switch from 40- and 20-player raids to 25- and 10-player raids can still put as much strain on guilds in 2021 as it did in 2007. At least if they’re normal guilds that don’t just kick members or get rid of them Raid teams to get the perfect roster size, or where players don’t need to get multiple characters through the Attunement process in record time just to go from damage expert to healer or tank.
Since I was a raid and guild leader back then, in 2007, I still remembered all the complaints that were brought to me at the time. Sometimes there were complaints about the formation of small groups within the guild, and you can’t connect anywhere yourself, sometimes about the fact that nobody ever answers when you’re looking for people for a dungeon or a group quest again. And there are plenty of group quests in Outland.
Even the first raid evenings caused problems back then. Why am I in the Karazhan group? I’d rather play with them! Why do I have to go to the substitutes’ bench and not him? And yes, I could read all these things again now, in 2021. Occasionally, players have already left guilds or thought about changing guilds. The transition from Classic to TBC remains an enormous challenge for all guild and raid leaders, but also for every normal member.
WoW: TBC Classic – My conclusion so far
Personally, I’ve had a lot of fun on Outland so far. It’s just fun to tackle the (sometimes quite tough) dungeon and raid bosses with the guild, to master the attunement process together with everyone or just to play a few arena games for fun. The fact that all of this is fun is also due to the fact that Blizzard has the servers under control most of the time. The launch was surprisingly smooth. After that there was a day or two when the developers, in my opinion, lowered the number of layers on the server too early, which made questing in the open world quite corrosive for a while. However, the situation improved noticeably over time.
I myself didn’t stick slavishly to the “dungeon grind to benevolent” rule, but kept throwing in quests, so leveling never got boring, and even with the second character I now level up to level 70 completely chilled. In general you can already tell that TBC is an era where you should play up a second or third character. As soon as you’ve done the reputation grind and the attunement procedure (which takes a while), there’s not much to do apart from the raids and daily dungeons, at least if you’re not a big arena fan or don’t farm thousands of gold would like.
For my part, I am already looking forward to the coming weeks and months, because one thing is certain: the most exciting challenges of Outland are still to come.
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.
Heroes&WIKI, WoW, WoWNews, #TheBurningCrusade, WoWTBS, #WorldofWarcraftTBS, #TBS, #TBSNews, #TBSGuide, #TBSSpecials, #TBSGuides,#TheBurningCrusadeGuide, #TheBurningCrusadeGuides