World of Warcraft Expansions Round-Up

World of Warcraft has been around for a very long time, and it’s evolved an awful lot since it was first released. Whether through incremental updates, major updates or expansion packs, it’s hard to say that the World of Warcraft of 2012 is anything like the game that became a big hit. Constant evolution and change, on the one hand, is one of fantastic elements of modern day gaming, although some people don’t like the way core mechanics have been changed over the years. Vanilla servers have become more than a little popular as a result and are the best way to see the game as it originally was. With the release of the latest World of Warcraft expansion; Mists of Pandaria, we thought we’d take a look over the expansions we’ve had in the past, to catch people up on things they may have missed and to chronicle the ever-changing world of Azeroth.

World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft was released in 2006 to critical acclaim. Nobody could have seen it coming – an MMO that was so successful it eclipsed every other successful MMO within months. Previous to World of Warcraft (and generally after World of Warcraft as well), a successful MMO was classed as have a few hundred thousand subscribers. World of Warcraft turned the standard into millions. World of Warcraft made it so that The Old Republic – with two million active subscribers – was viewed by some as a failure.

The latest expansion Mists of Pandaria

Blizzard managed to capture the casual market, reducing the amount of penalties for playing badly and increasing the reward for putting in a lot of time and effort. That’s why they managed to change the face of the MMO industry entirely and that’s why every new expansion has turned into a major gaming event. From The Guild and Penny Arcade, to the myriad of copycat titles on the market, through spin-off books and “influenced by” CDs, the World of Warcraft arm is far-reaching and incredibly powerful.

The Burning Crusade

The release of the first expansion pack, The Burning Crusade, proved how dominant World of Warcraft had become. Two years after World of Warcraft had become hugely popular, 2.4 million bought The Burning Crusade on the day it came out, with some of them queuing for hours prior to midnight launches. It went on to become one of the fastest selling PC games ever.

The Burned Crusade offered numerous new features, several of which that have become standards that would be hard to imagine no implemented in World of Warcraft. Firstly the game itself was expanded, with new locations in Azeroth and a brand new world to explore called Outland, an increase to the level cap, new monsters, new quests and much, much more. It was a decent release for people that treated World of Warcraft as a single player MMO, but it was even better for those involved in the PvP side of things.

Burning Crusade

With a new skirmish mode that allowed for items to be rewarded based on points, the best of the best could begin to strut their stuff. The skirmish levels have since become an important part of eSport events everywhere, further cementing World of Warcraft as a staple of the MMO genre.

Wrath of the Lich King

Another World of Warcraft expansion, another record broken. The Burning Crusade had quickly become the fastest selling PC game of all time, but Wrath of the Lich King somehow managed to break that record. 2.8 million gamers bought the expansion day one, joining the fight against the Lich King and exploring the new continent of Northrend.

The changes made in Wrath of the Lich King were a little more obvious that perhaps the changes made in The Burning Crusade. Graphical enhancements drastically improved the way several areas of the game looked, while Blizzard also added new options designed to squeeze extra life out of older computers. It significantly widened the range of people interested in playing – from people for whom the graphics had become stale and for others who couldn’t previously run the game at a decent frame rate.

Wrath of the Lich King added a whole host of new areas and a ton of new quest progressions, dramatically increasing the length of an already lengthy game. The developers added a new PvParea – available even on PvE servers – and new dungeons designed to test even those who had reached the new level cap of 70.

Cataclysm

Not content with merely improving the graphics as they had with Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard decided they were going to rip apart the world of Azeroth with their next expansion, Cataclysm. Gone were the areas of tranquil peace, replaced by precursors to a massive battle against Deathwing the Destroyer, a dragon that would force members of the Alliance and members of the Hoard to fight alongside one another against an enemy too strong for any single race.

Graphically, the world was a completely different place. That wasn’t all that changed though, with a massive change in the way the Hoard and the Alliance viewed one another. The war began to heat up and quests were changed to better show that. Talking of quests , over 3500 were added to the game with Cataclysm, both in new Cataclysm-specific zones and to better display the changes in areas that had been altered after the return of Death wing.

Absolutely no surprise, Cataclysm again topped the “fastest ever PC sales” chart, knocking out 3.3 million copies in a single day. It was finally beaten this year, when Blizzard’s Diablo III was released.

Mists of Pandaria

Every expansion for World of Warcraft has changed the game dramatically, both in terms of gameplay and visual style. This has been generally rewarded by a massive amount of sales. Mists of Pandaria looks set to change the World of Warcraft again, offering a newly renewed tranquillity to parts of Azeroth. Take a look at our Mists of Pandaria Preview Trailer post to see how thing are going to change now that the expansion has been released.

World of Warcraft Expansions - The Conclusion

There’s no question as to why - given the success of the base game - Blizzard manage to make the best MMO expansions around. Now that The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King are included with the base game as standard, the World of Warcraft has never been a more enticing place to visit, and with the epic changes brought about by Cataclysm, older users have every reason to come back. Early reports of Pandaria seem to imply it’ll be continuing the tradition of top Blizzard games, but can it top Diablo III?