There is a game that has continued to revolutionize and top the PC market. World of Warcraft has flooded the shelves and sold solidly for almost two continuous years. Now, with just a few months until the target release date for its expansion, Blizzard is poised to strike the world with another mega-hit. Not an entirely new game, but enough content for one. Burning Crusade will be the first expansion for World of Warcraft, and from everything we've seen it might end up being the most complete and expansive expansion to any online game, ever.

Burning Crusade is adding nearly everything we could have asked Blizzard for: it's got a giant new world, more levels to improve every character through, a very deep new craft, new ways to customize gear, hundreds of new enemies, new raids, new dungeons, new instances, new quests, and even two completely new races.

The new races will add powerful new options for players either on the side of the vicious Horde or the noble Alliance. The Horde's new members have been known for a while, the dark and beautiful Blood Elves. These elves are mortal enemies of the Night Elves, and are considered evil by the Alliance races primarily due to their reliance on dark magic. Very recently announced, however, is the Alliance addition: Draenei. These dragon-like creatures are very cool bipedal blue-ish gray humanoids from the same planet as the Orcs. They have a very deep and interesting back story involving fleeing from the dreaded Orcs and surviving in small numbers within the Outland.

As with every race in WoW, these two have some inherent powers that are available from conception and have some limited use throughout the entire game. The Blood Elves have some very differently styled powers than most races. Their powers involve draining creatures around them to save up charges, which can be used to restore mana or even silences everyone in a radius. While these sounds both insanely cool and insanely overpowered, we can trust that Blizzard will spend a great deal of time tweaking them and perhaps even retooling the entire idea right up until that far away launch date (which is very tentative anyway). The Draenei, on the other hand, have much more traditional (in WoW terms, that is) powers, such as a natural bonus to jewel crafting (the new profession) and a small regeneration spell. The good news is, unlike many of the natural abilities of the other races, the regen effect will become slowly more powerful with the character, retaining its usefulness through level 70.

According to Warcraft lore, there is a Dark Portal that goes to a realm that was once great and mighty. This realm was once the beautiful home of the Orcs and Draenei, as well as hundreds of other creatures. During the expansion to the second installment of Warcraft, a series of gates to other worlds was constructed in Draenor, with one (titled the "Dark Portal") going to Azeroth. These other portals were shut and their energies collapsed, the shock of which caused a great cataclysm through the planet, nearly destroying it. What remains is floating chunks of land, swirling freely through the Twisting Nether. This land was abandoned by the Orcs, and is now inhabited by the Blood Elves and the roaming bands that remain of the Draenei. In this stricken land, there are flying mounts, which don't just cart people from one city to another, but in fact are free-roaming controllable mounts for level 70 players. The land will also have many player-versus-player themes to it, including greatly discussed and still very early in development objectives for PvP. Essentially, this will function something like a non-instanced, continuous battleground, with players moving in and out all the time.

All of these great new additions, plus the ability to make rings and amulets as a jewel crafter and the inclusion of socketed items; this is what an expansion pack is supposed to be. It's going to take some time, and it's going to need a lot of tweaking, but this just may be exactly what World of Warcraft needs to supply its players with, exactly what they want. Tentatively scheduled for a late year (probably holidays) release, a quick history lesson teaches us that Blizzard loves anniversaries and World of Warcraft released November 23rd. It's nothing official, but I would mark my calendar, just in case.