20th Anniversary Celebration: Burning Crusade Memories Edition

Wyrmrest Accord
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This is a weekly series! Here are the threads so far…

:point_up: Keep sharing! A new expansion thread will drop each week.

The Burning Crusade

Alrighty, still-oldies. This week, we look back at Burning Crusade, WoW first expansion.

Incoming Burning Crusade Memories…

What did you think of the iconic “YOU ARE NOT PREPARED” trailer when it first debuted?

Where you there on BC Launch Day? Did anything explode?

Were you a new or veteran player at this point? What n00bish things did you do in BC?

What was your favorite raid of this expansion?

What would you say was your biggest Burning Crusade achievement?

What would Today You say to Burning Crusade You?

Bonus: If possible. re-create your technicolor vomit BC mog and post it here.

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I don’t have a strong memory of Illidan’s trailer but I do remember seeing the belf/draenei trailer and thinking “SURELY THIS IS THE PINNACLE OF GRAPHIC, NONE WILL EVER SURPASS THIS ELF LADY EATING A MAGIC WORM”

Another pre-release memory I have is of participating in the pre-release controversy over the belf male models, which were made significantly more buff at some point during development and had some hairstyles removed, in particular a goofy ff7 cloud hairstyle. I wanted to be a skinny jrpg-haired elf so I joined the forum protests, which were ultimately in vain: skinny elf with cloud hairstyle never made it out of beta

Yes, and yes. The belf starting zone was complete pandemonium. As I recall it was completely carpeted with baby elves and virtually unplayable.

I had played in vanilla but I was still quite noobish, in the way that the playerbase in general was just sort of low-knowledge and non-elite at the time. I don’t remember doing anything catastrophically doofy other than just generally being a really incompetent bear tank

My in-game accomplishments were virtually nonexistent because in this expansion almost all my time was spent RPing rather than playing. I still have some of my characters from this time and they have ridiculous /played and nothing to show for it since they were all sitting around in stormwind

Probably uhh stop neglecting school so that you can hang out in stormwind?

I actually remember how I used to dress. I mained a druid at the time and, when in-character, I donned the “glyphed” set, which, being pre-mog, had to occupy most of my bag space. So I looked like this, pretty sensible by BC standards.

Bonus Bonus: here’s an archive link of character profiles in Thorium Brotherhood, my home server in 2007

https://web.archive.org/web/20071103031249/http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=11891652&sid=1

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lol, I literally thought this exactly about the dwarf in the OG trailer. "THIS IS THE PINNACLE OF VIDEO GAME TRAILERS, NONE WILL SURPASS THIS DWARF WEARING EARRINGS IN THE SNOW

Wow, I actually had forgotten this. I missed launch due to school but I remember the trailer and the male belf model controversy. Now I wonder how many people would have preferred the non-buff version, since folks are aching for more diverse body options.

Your BC threw me back into time so hard, the Infinites thought I was one of them. The outfits were so simple back then, basically just textured patterns on the skin.

As for a few of my answers…

What did you think of the iconic “YOU ARE NOT PREPARED” trailer when it first debuted?

I got chills yet at the same time, I thought it was contrived. Now I say it every stupid opportunity I get and put it on my guild Discord soundboard.

Where you there on BC Launch Day? Did anything explode?

I missed launch day itself due to being extremely busy at university then popped in at around November 2007 or so. That said, seeing the opened Dark Portal login screen, updated music, and watching orcs streaming out of the in-game portal captured my imagination immediately.

Were you a new or veteran player at this point? What n00bish things did you do in BC?

I honestly still think of myself as a n00b at this point, though I finally rolled Holy instead of cosplayed a healer as a Ret wearing cloth. It was this expansion where I became the guild healer.

What was your favorite raid of this expansion?

Karazhan. It felt so much more intimate than Vanilla raids and I incidentally met a guildie I know to this day in that raid. I remember being on duty as an RA and the raid would actually go on break for me to do my rounds. My rounds partner was deeply confused why I was running between the buildings and up the stairs so fast.

What would you say was your biggest Burning Crusade achievement?

My guild. I didn’t found it (RIP Fil), but this is when I joined and began running it. Still have many good friends to this day from a chance meeting online.

What would Today You say to Burning Crusade You?

Do Computer Science or Biology, you’ll be employable come the recession in a few years. What you chose was fun but useless until 10 years into your career.

Bonus: If possible. re-create your technicolor vomit BC mog and post it here.

Though I wrote this question, I’m actually scratching my head on this one. I remember having the Shard of the Naaru mace. If I maybe go from there, I could figure out a few pieces.

This also marked the second expansion when my paladin did not take off her helmet. She never did, even indoors or during forced socialization time. It became a running joke after a month and went on for years.

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What did you think of the iconic “YOU ARE NOT PREPARED” trailer when it first debuted?

If you’re referring to the BC release trailer (which contained it? I think?), that’s what got me playing. (March 2008). My daughter saw the Blood Elf and wanted to play. I knew Warcraft already, just wasn’t playing WoW. When daughter brought it up, I watched the trailer. I remember thinking Ilidan reminded me of home, but hey what an easy way to convince the ex to let me play WoW! “She wants to play, It’s her! I’m just playing to keep her safe and monitor her behavior. I swear!” Needless to say, ex didn’t buy it, but I got to hang out with my daughter doing something we both loved. That was a WIN.

Where you there on BC Launch Day? Did anything explode?

No, I started in March '08.

Were you a new or veteran player at this point? What n00bish things did you do in BC?

I’d been playing video games since the late 80’s. Loved EQ. I knew how to play prot war but rogue was new to me. I had a great group of IRL friends playing, so I went from noob to decent pretty quickly. I still however insist to this day that it would make sense for a rogue to stack intellect, because they need to be cunning.

What was your favorite raid of this expansion?

I was actually raiding back then unlike now, but since I had come in late to the game, I was way down on the roster so most of the time I was picked to tank old Vanilla or ‘already old’ BC raids that people wanted to go back and run. I liked BC Gruul’s lair, because it was quick but I enjoyed overgearing / tanking Molten Core. As an old DND Dwarf fan, blasting through bosses inside a mountain was amazing.

What would you say was your biggest Burning Crusade achievement?

Crafting the Turbo-Charged Flying Machine. KHORIUM CAN DIE IN A FIRE

What would Today You say to Burning Crusade You?

Don’t roll a rogue. Stick with the prot war. Don’t ever roll a rogue. Norman should have been a warrior.

Bonus: If possible. re-create your technicolor vomit BC mog and post it here.
[/quote]

I’ll have to try and remember. I may come back to edit.

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A vague relic of this controversy was the belf rogue forum avatar using a hairstyle from alpha which you couldn’t use in-game, I think

https://i.imgur.com/Cu42ZrW.png

Another pre-release character creation weirdness was how they announced the expansion would have two new races, and then took another few weeks or months to actually reveal what the second race would be.

The initial announcement revealed belves but the burning crusade site just had the Alliance race as a mystery, before eventually getting this lore dump page, announcing to a slightly confused playerbase, “wait, those weird goblin guys from Frozen Throne are handsome paladins now?” it all worked out in the end

https://i.imgur.com/6tYObFu.png

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Where you there on BC Launch Day? Did anything explode?

The queue time to get into the server was forever. And then once I rolled my Blood Elf the starting zone was pure chaos. I loved every minute of it. That toon became one of the main characters I RP to this day, their story even leading them to becoming a Void Elf back in BFA. So a lot of fond memories in BC.

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I walked in with outdated ideas like this as well. Sadly, more intellect did not make my hunter hit harder, in spite them having mana.

I’d forgotten how broken the neck used to look in the old male belf avatars. Seriously. What kind of angle is that?

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I was aggravated. I had no interest in Outland at all.

I was there. The Dark Portal crashed Eonar (server I was on) repeatedly and I finally gave up after a couple of hours.

I started very early on in vanilla. The most n00bness I had in BC was repeatedly getting stomped by the Doomwalker.

Kara hands down. Still one of my favorites.

Got brave and started to PvP. Not brave enough to do arena though. I’m still not really.

Believe it or not you are going to remember BC more fondly than you do Northrend.

Most of what I rocked was offset and I couldn’t remember what it looked like if I tried.

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I was looking forward to dealing with Illidan’s nonsense. Imagine my surprise when Illidan barely factored into events until we broke into his house and killed his pets.

Wintergrasp. A Level 55 Paladin. I was a chronically slow leveler (Given I was a Paladin in Kalimdor), and desperately trying to milk out those last few levels to join in the Outland fun. I think it was a week after launch when I hit Level 58.

I spent the majority of Burning Crusade as a Holy-spec Paladin. Imagine doing Dailies like that.

Thousand yard stare

…I got to know Karazhan back to front.

Joining a serious Raiding Guild for the first and last time.

Don’t join Impossibilium.

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I’m assuming you mean Winterspring but just in case you’re a time traveler, wanted to make sure.

I don’t have to. I did it, too. It was absolute hell. Dual-specs would have been a godsend to us those days.

While reading this thread, a BC PvP memory surged up: Flight was new in BC and druids at the start were able to swap to flight form in combat. I was still fresh off Vanilla PvP and had no idea what we were in store for with Resilience and other new mechanics, but I distinctly remember me and my buddies getting our butts whooped in wPvP while a druid swooped in, grabbed an herb, and swooped out with not a scratch.

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Yeah, Winterspring.

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What did you think of the iconic “YOU ARE NOT PREPARED” trailer when it first debuted?

I wasn’t into lore back then, so I kind of didn’t care.

Where you there on BC Launch Day? Did anything explode?

Made a Draenei. I was the only Draenei mage. Every other Draenei player made a shaman. Heh.

I got bored with the starter zone and ran through to the Exodar. I was the first person there. Got into trade chat and started narrating what it looked like. About 20 minutes later, some human found his way there.

Not on actual launch day, but early on there was a glitch with DKs. If you got on the boat at Booty Bay and death gripped someone, you could launch them around the world. We did that. It was wild.

Were you a new or veteran player at this point? What n00bish things did you do in BC?

Started a blood elf guild. It was huge for a couple of weeks, then everyone got bored and went back to their mains.

What was your favorite raid of this expansion?

I was still a PvP nerd.

What would you say was your biggest Burning Crusade achievement?

The only decent raiding guild on my server (Horde) finished Black Temple and then decided they were going to raid Stormwind. I caught wind of it and started calling it out in Alliance trade chat. I had a ton of PvP friends, and they ALL ported in and brought their guildies. There were so many PvPers and raiders in SW that Trade District was wall to wall. The Horde brought 2 40-man raids and some others. We met them at the outer gate. They tried to push in. We countered. By the time they got into SW, the lag was so bad that no one was hitting anyone. A minute later: World Server Offline.

I told you that story to tell you this one:

At that point, a successful major city raid had never been held on my server. Honestly, no one on Llane thought it could be done, and if it was going to be attempted, it had to be super late night in the middle of the week when people had work and school, right? Wrong.

Challenge accepted. I was bored that New Years Eve and started putting things together. Picked a city: SMC. Ran a warlock and summoners into SMC, into the throne room (the lock died SO many times). And we set up shop for the next day in the room behind the throne, underneath the teleporter that took you to UC. There was no agro there. Logged out.

The next day was New Years Day and I got on an alt and started pushing the idea in trade chat around noon. The Alliance was going for a city raid, and it wasn’t going to be at 4 am. People kept asking which city. I wouldn’t tell them. I got whispers from people asking who was going. I told guild 1 that guild 2 was going, and I told guild 2 that guild 1 was going. They both bought it and committed. Once I started getting the known PvPers, they all joined in.

We set a time. I told them they’d get a summons but to keep their mouths shut and tell no one. I didn’t want the Horde PvPers to find out what city we were going to. I wanted them all to think we were trying for Orgrimmar.

We got a small audience of Horde players while we were at the end of the summoning. We waved. Then we flooded out into the throne room, killed Lor’themar and friends. Still no Horde PvPers. So we kept going. We took out every NPC in the city (except the kid).

Still no Horde PvPers. So we ran to Undercity. And promptly got lost because none of us had Forsaken characters. That’s where the Horde PvPers found us. We died a glorious death. We made a commemorative video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CqUbHEA1vo&t=103s

Past that, I kited Hogger into Goldshire and we just stood there, hanging out. People kept asking where Hogger was and they didn’t believe he was in Goldshire.

Kited Stitches down into Stranglethorn. I was heading for Booty Bay when some guild spotted us and decided they had to kill him. He was over half way there. Sad day. I was planning to put him on the boat and take him to Ratchet.

What would Today You say to Burning Crusade You?

Yeah, BC kinda sucked, but wait for it.

Oh - bonus memories:

  • Was running around Elwynn on alts when some random mage just started following a guildie and me. And buffing us over and over. And using 1 attack. We had no idea what was going on. He followed us for close to an hour until we were heading to Westfall. He really wasn’t leveled for the zone, but tried to follow us anyway. We had to keep leading him back into Elwynn. Finally, the mage’s mom got on the account and told us we’d been babysitting her 4-year-old.

  • Met a brand new player in Duskwood who’d accidentally crossed over from Elwynn and kept getting killed before he could get back. We killed off the wolves, got him back across the river and into the city. Explained what a mailbox was. Gave him some coins. It was his first day. Last time I saw him, he was in the top raiding guild on the server.

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I didn’t get that attached to the illidan part but I thought it was cool to see the glow up some of the characters in the cinematic got. In the original the undead guy is in rags, now he’s in PVP gear and the human mage in questing gear and now in a raid set. I thought that was neat.

I drove in a snow storm to stand in line at GameStop.

I remember making a Blood Elf and the opening dialog said something like YOU ARE ONE OF THE FEW SURVIVORS and when it ended on my character there was hundreds of Blood Elves running around and just as many corpses from Warlocks killing themselves lmao.

I’m gonna say n00bish. I had been playing vanilla the past year or so but because I was still in school, it was pretty casual since I could only do an hour or less a night. I barely had been level 60, partially because my IRL friends jumped servers so I had to start over twice in that first year and a half I was playing.

Caverns of Time raid was very cool. Nowadays I say Karazhan but back then I really liked Caverns of Time.

Getting Hand of A’dal.

Get a better computer omg

I’m not playing my priest but it would be that Hellfire Peninsula questing set. I love it lmao

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Ah yes I forgot about my BC era 3 seconds per frame in shattrath

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Honestly, standing in line for BC and LK expacs were some of my favorite memories. It was fun to talk to all the other gaming nerds.

Bwahahaha, that’s great.

I wonder if Blizz ever regretted that particular wording. It’s still brought up today.

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I’m surprised I even raided considering how bad my FPS was. I remember on Muru I was completely useless because there was just too much going on that would cause my machine to freeze up. I got benched for that fight :frowning:

Yah those were fun! I miss it to some extent but also I’m too old to stand in line at midnight for a game anymore LOL

I think it’s ironic, when I first played WoW, I didn’t have enough time to play because of High School and College. Now I’m a grown up and I’m back to not having enough time to play because I have adult problems now. Gonna spend the weekend fixing a leak in my bathroom woo

Yah, it was just so dang funny. It was insane how quickly it changed the faction balance on my server. I actually ended up rolling my undead priest which I would main until Legion during TBC because leveling was pretty fun with all the Blood Elf baby characters. There was so many people to group with.

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I was late getting to the portal, because it took me FOR. EVER. to level in those days. By the time I hit 58, everyone else in my guild had been in Outland for so long that they were max leveled and had flying unlocked.

My biggest memory was that I had stayed up all night, the sun was shining through the windows, and I was SO in awe of that giant portal I had finally arrived at. Do any of the rest of you remember that awe? It was so impressive at the time! And I loved the swirly, depth effects!

All I remember for the classic BC mog were those caster pants you got early on (as Horde, at least; never played as Alliance). They were bright lime green with either red or pink accents along the holes in the sides. And as far as I remember, that was for both males and females. They were wretched. XD

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What did you think of the iconic “YOU ARE NOT PREPARED” trailer when it first debuted?

I played WC 1 & 2, but somehow never got to WC 3 so I thought it was pretty neat, but it didn’t really resonate.

Where you there on BC Launch Day? Did anything explode?

The lag in Hellfire Peninsula was incredible and there were so many players it was almost impossible to complete quests. Pretty sure I remember the servers going down multiple times. I ended up levelling a Belf (which wasn’t quite as bad) for a day or two until things calmed down.

Were you a new or veteran player at this point? What n00bish things did you do in BC?

I’d been playing for a year+ at that point. “Why’s the ground shaking?” SQUISH

What was your favorite raid of this expansion?

Karazhan, although we ran the attunements for that So. Many. Times.

What would you say was your biggest Burning Crusade achievement?

Actually seeing most of the raid content for the first time.

What would Today You say to Burning Crusade You?

Stick to casters, seriously.

Bonus: If possible. re-create your technicolor vomit BC mog and post it here.

It included these, enough said.
https://www.wowhead.com/item=24674/eldrnaan-pants?bonus=6654

Although I also got the seriously edgelordy warlock Tier 5 set which is still one of my favorites.

https://www.wowhead.com/tbc/guide/tier-5-set-overview-burning-crusade-classic#warlock

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For me, I disliked Burning Crusade’s content. Didn’t like like Outland at all. I liked the gameplay changes, but otherwise meh. Some of the dungeons were fun, but other than that it was all about PVP for me.

My two biggest memories of TBC were, on my Tauren hunter, killing the elite Bogstrider right next to the Cenarion Outpost right before players on the biggest Alliance raiding/PVP guild on the server did. So, because they were no lifers who had Horde accounts, they would track me down and spawn camp me, either themselves or their guildies. Like it was to the point where I couldn’t quest at all.

So then I decided to level my Troll mage and had an absolute blast (literally because she was a Fire mage lol). I remember the summer fire festival that year had the huge boss in Slave Pens, and I got his really cool scythe first drop on day 1. I don’t know if I was server first but clearly I was one of the few. People would constantly whisper me saying ‘omg that’s so cool where do you get it’ for a long time after.

Also got decked out in max PVP gear and spent most of my TBC time in Battlegrounds, namely Arathi Basin and AV. Mostly AV. Had some incredible times there, kicking butt and melting faces.

Launch day was fun. My friends and I rolled Belves just for the lolz and I remember the sheer cutthroat chaos that was the starting areas. Everyone spamming to tag mobs to complete the quests before someone else did. The angry screaming about it. It was worst at the start but I remember it persisting all the way to Ghostlands.

And of course, getting stomped on by the Fel Reaver in Hellfire. Rite of passage. Also giving up all my PVP epics on my hunter for the freaking clown suit that Hellfire questing gear was. That was hard. I never got rid of them though, since this was long before transmog. I have all my original hunter and mage epics in their banks.

Flying for the first time was amazing, and I went Aldor before hand simply for the short cut from Shat into Nagrand. Though social wise my two friends got really into raiding and left me behind a little bit. I don’t raid so it got a bit lonely, probably why I ended up living in BGs most of TBC. I still don’t think I ever officially completed the ‘story’ of that expansion. But given I never played Frozen Throne I didn’t have as much connection with it. All I knew was what happened at the end of WC2: Beyond The Dark Portal and what happened with Illidan in Warcraft 3, but no idea why he was the bad guy.

The way I’ve always looked at WoW is that Vanilla was the open Alpha. The world and core gameplay loop was there but it was unrefined, there was no real story. TBC was the Beta, where they began figuring out how to make questing less of a pain and refine the gameplay loops, as well as provide some kind of a story even if it was disjointed.

Wrath was the release version of WoW, where the game was firing on all cylinders with incredibly smooth gameplay, an amazing world visually and with stuff to go do, and a incredible story that finally linked up with WC3. Great times in a great game that only seemed to be going up.

But I’ll save those memories for the next thread.

I’d tell my younger self to not get so miffed about her friends getting into raiding and to avoid the arguement that she started with one of them, but that she did a great job resolving it so the friendship didn’t end and only got stronger from that point on.

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I do. I was late to the party and didn’t experience it with the launch swarm, but I remember walking through the portal to the other side, seeing a completely new, unexplored world, and being in total awe. I also remember my FPS dropping to 6.

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