The Burning Crusade thusfar.

So much to write about, so little time and inclination since I'd rather be playing. Still since I'm back at work after a week off, I'm going to use my breaks to bring folks up to speed on my thoughts and reflections on The Burning Crusade.

Here's a few snippets though:

*Hellfire Penninsula: The first zone beyond the Dark Portal. Many, many quests there, as well as the first two Dungeons. By the time even a newly-minted level 60 has finished this zone, they'll have gear on a par with a hardened Molten Core raider and experience of handling some tricky Dungeon fights. If you're already a hardened raider, this zone still offers a few rewards, but little actual challenge.

*Levelling: Not as hard as I first imagined. I'm averaging a level ever 10-12 hours of playtime. Wulf is now lvl 65 and if I'd gone all out, he could have been 66.

*Factions: Every zone has groups of people who want you to do stuff for them in exchange for the right to buy stuff. You could easily level just working to appease these various groups, and since leaving Hellfire Pennisula, that's pretty much all that Wulf has been doing.

*Gear: Wulf went into this game wearing full epic-level gear. Within a week, most of this has been replaced with Rare dungeon drops and quest items. One of his epic rings has in fact been replaced with an Uncommon-quality drop off a random mob.

*Huntering: Wulf's a Beastmaster, and loving it. He tamed a new pet on the first night, a Ravager which has supplanted his beloved Wolves as his main pet. It's a weird pet, high damage stats, high armor and low health, which means it's a great tank against enemies that do physical damage, but it tends to suffer when there's any magical or elemental damage flying around. Still, with talents in Beastmastery, Wulf's been able to use him to act as an Off Tank or even a Main Tank in dungeons with few problems.

The changes to Hunter damage have been marked. Now rather than doing damage in large spikes with inflexible shot rotations, Hunter damage is smoother, with more options to go from auto-shot spam to all-out nuke depending on the situation.

That's all I have for now. I'll do some more updates throughout the week, possibly with pictures as well.