The Burning Crusade is the first expansion for World of Warcraft, released on January 16th, 2007 in North America, Europe and Australia, February 2nd, 2007 in Korea, and April 3rd, 2007 in Taiwan and Hong Kong. The main features include an increase of the level cap, the introduction of the blood elves and the draenei as playable races and the addition of the world of Outland, along with many new zones, dungeons, items, quests, and monsters.

• Blood elf -- A faction of former Alliance members join the Horde in the expansion. They are led by Regent Lord Lor'Themar Theron. Blood Elf capital is Silvermoon City. Their racial mount is the bird-like hawkstrider and their language is Thalassian.
• Draenei -- A faction of uncorrupted eredar join the Alliance. They are led by their prophet, Velen. The draenei capital city is The Exodar. Their racial mount is the elephant-like elekk and their language is Draenei.

The expansion also allows previously faction-exclusive classes to be played on the opposing faction, with the inclusion of Horde blood elf paladins and Alliance draenei shamans.

Each new race received its own new mount:

• Blood elf -- a hawkstrider (originally called a cockatrice). These mounts can be found outside the entrance to Silvermoon City. Blood elf paladin mounts are the same as alliance though they are red instead of the alliance blue.
• Draenei -- an elekk ("a creature with a resemblance to a caparisoned war elephant" - GameSpot). These mounts can be found outside The Exodar.

New mounts are also available via drop from high-end instances such as Karazhan.

Main article: Flying Mounts

Flying mounts are useable in Outland at level 70. The Horde and Alliance have the wyvern and gryphon, respectively, as standard mounts. The epic mounts are the armored wyvern and armored gryphon.

In addition there are rare mounts such as netherdrake and armored netherdrake. An armored nether drake can be obtained by ranking first at the end of an Arena season, and the unarmored netherdrake can be obtained through a series of quests.

Normal flying mount training costs 800 and the mount costs 100. Training for flying mounts requires a skill of 150 (epic mount) and brings it up to 225. The epic version of the flying mount cost 5000 for the training and 200 to buy. Training for epic flying mounts requires 225 riding skill and upgrades it to 300.

Druids receive Flight Form at level 68 that offers the ability to fly and has a speed equivalent to a normal flying mount. Druids may obtain a quest at level 70 to obtain an epic flight form.(since patch 2.1 ) Purchasing riding skill 300 is a requirement for the quest.

The expansion has added several dungeons, including many in Outland and Azeroth.The dungeons contain a plethora of new equipment including Tier 4 , Tier 5 and Tier 6 armor pieces.

Azeroth

• Karazhan in Deadwind Pass
• Caverns of Time in Tanaris
• Zul'Aman in Quel'Thalas

Outland

• Hellfire Citadel, located on the Hellfire Peninsula
• Coilfang Reservoir in the Zangarmarsh
• Auchindoun in the Terokkar Forest
• Tempest Keep outside Netherstorm
• Gruul's Lair in the Blade's Edge Mountains
• Black Temple in the Shadowmoon Valley

All future raids will now have caps not exceeding 25 players (older raids will remain at a 40 player cap, at least for now). This was done to allow for a greater number of players to participate in epic raids, and to allow more flexibility in the design of encounters.

In addition, high level instances have a feature allowing players to have the option to run the instances at two different difficulty levels: Normal and Heroic. This would turn a level 60-62 instance into a level 70 instance. The final boss of every hard mode instance will drop epic items, and every boss in hard mode instances will drop tokens to get special gear available in Shattrath. These instances will be marked with a purple portal

Information brought to you by the WOW Alliance Leveling Guide written to be used as you level - PennsWorld.com

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