The Burning Crusade ships

Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade this morning went on sale at midnight across the U.S. and Europe. The first expansion set to the subscription-based multiplayer online role-playing game adds a new continent named 'Outland' for players to explore, and brings two new races -- the Blood Elves and Draenei -- as well as flying mounts that players can use to reach locations in Outland that would otherwise be inaccessible. World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade offers numerous player-vs.-player features, and is priced at $40. Players must already own the original World of Warcraft game ($20) to install the new expansion on a system running Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later with a 933MHz G4 or G5 processor, 512MB of memory, 10GB of free storage space, and an NVIDIA or ATI graphics card with at least 32MB of video memory.

"The Burning Crusade is the single largest expansion we've ever created, and we're grateful for the support shown by our beta testers and the millions of World of Warcraft players worldwide during its development," said Mike Morhaime, president and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "We're excited to share all of the new content with players, and we're certain that they'll enjoy the quality and breadth of new experiences that The Burning Crusade offers."



The arrival of the expansion removes the previous level 60 cap, raising the bar for players to continue advancing to level 70 as they journey through Outland while gaining powerful new abilities. The Burning Crusade brings hundreds of new quests and monsters, as well as several unexplored dungeons or 'instances' with new challenges. The long-awaited expansion includes a new profession -- jewelcrafting -- and adds socketed items that players can encrust with precious stones for additional bonuses.

by MacNN Staff