World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade

World of Warcraft Expansion Pack
Developer(s)	Blizzard Entertainment
Publisher(s)	Vivendi Universal
Platform(s)	Windows, Mac OS X
Release	N/A
Genre(s)	MMORPG
Mode(s)	Multiplayer

World of Warcraft Expansion Pack (working title) is a game expansion to the highly acclaimed World of Warcraft. No release date has yet been given.

General information

Blizzard and the Lead Producer of World of Warcraft, Shane Dabiri, has officialy announced [1] that they are working on an expansion pack for the the massively multiplayer online game. (People should stop linking to the forums since those links are retired after a few weeks. Quote the damn thing instead)

Rumors

These are rumors and should not be taken as anything else.

• That it will be announced at the BlizzCon convention in October 25, 2005. [2] Blizzard public relations coordinator George Wang said that there will be a World of Warcraft-related announcement at the convention. [3]
• A raised level cap. In April 1st [4], 2005 Blizzard poked fun at their upcoming Battlegrounds feature. They featured screenshots of an Orc and Human who challenged each other to the battlegrounds. Originally one of the pictures showed that the human character was level 65. It was quickly replaced with a clearly edited photo where the level was lowered down to 60. The original picture is available here. [5] Some people say Blizzard edited it because they didn't want there to be a discussion on why the character level was above the normally attainable.
• The expansion pack will integrate real-time weather effects all across Azeroth. However Blizzard has not said that weather effects have been pushed back to be included in an expansion pack, but rather the hints available point it to be released in an upcoming content pack. [6] [7]
• Characters will be able to learn other racial languages, even those of the opposing factions. It should be noted that this has been rumoured about every single patch or upgrade made by Blizzard so far and that it's been reported that language development has been put on hold for the foreseeable future.
• At least one new race for each faction. Goblins were planned to be the fourth Alliance race before they were replaced by Gnomes. [8] Ogres were featured as a playable race in an April fools joke in 2004 [9] (former Blizzard April fools jokes have revealed to be true in the past, most noticeably the Secret Cow Level joke included in Diablo II. [10]) Hot candidates include Goblins, Blood Elves, Ogres, Naga, Draenei, Nerubians, High Elves, and Pandaren.
• There is speculations that the new game's name will be "The Burning Crusade" due to the fact that Blizzard Entertainment reserved the rights to the name in May 3, 2005. The name hints that the Burning Legion will have a large role or at least be the focus of the expansion. [11] There is also a subsection for the section Twisting Nether in Chapter Five: The Planes in the Warcraft RPG sourcebook, Shadows & Light, named The Burning Crusade. This details how unknown heroes of the Horde, Alliance, and other worlds are fighting a war together against the Burning Legion on worlds the Burning Legion is invading. This can lead to the assumption that the expansion will be based in the plane of existence, the Twisting Nether, or another world like Azeroth.
• The third continent of Northrend will be made available in the expansion, possibly including a fourth continent, Undermine [12] (Screenshot from Collector's Edition "Behind the Scenes" DVD)
• Extended cities with player housing neighborhoods. In Stormwind the blue instance portal behind a large portcullis is a hint for this. [13]
• The addition of a third faction, most noticeably one consisting of Nagas, Blood Elves and Draenei. This rumor has been taken with skepticism due to the fact that it would require Blizzard a large amount of time to redesign existing world content with additional towns, flight points and quests. There is no supporting evidence for this as of yet.

Sources

• Official World of Warcraft forums in a post written by Lead Producer Shane Dabiri, confirming that an expansion pack is being worked on as we speak.
• 1up.com article about the confirmation

External Links

• BlizzCon