TLC puts the C in Burning Crusade

Mood: -apem -cson -showdeny
Currently listening to: OWNING!

On the 17th of January, 2007, the geek population of Planet Earth rejoiced at the release of the new World of Warcraft expansion: Burning Crusade. It received a much bigger reception than the XBox 360, with an average of 6 and a half normal people turning up to the local games store to pick up their pre-ordered copy. Geeks were not counted into this statistic as it would make the figures much too large to fit on a single line of text and ruin the blogtrolling experience of our readers.

Casualties were not high at the release, with only 170 reported fatal tramplings of scrawny skinny geeks by their much larger, beefy counterparts. It is also with great shame that we report that the only places to become sold-out of Burning Crusade were the games specialists. Walmart and K-mart and whatnot-mart made more in one day than they did for the entire Christmas season. Yes, it was that exaggerately blown out of proportion.

The original World of Warcraft was first released on November 23, 2004. For a little over 2 years, fans have eagerly awaited Burning Crusade, even before it was announced. Everyone without a life would know that every Blizzard game has an expansion - it's the rule. If you did not know this, then you are the envy of everybody at The Letter C, because life is not something you can so easily gain back after throwing away.

It has been only a little over a day since the release and already the WoW servers have gone down 12 times due to server overload. This downtime has caused Blizzard to make 350% more profit than they expected - running 100+ servers is not a cheap task. As a result from this "unplanned" downtime, every Blizzard employee (including the janitor and his family) is now set for life and can comfortably retire within the next week to enjoy a life in the Bahamas.

Burning Crusade boasts a plethora (yes, plethora) of new features. Only the crappy features were listed during pre-release, but who would have guessed, the geeks came flocking anyway. New additions to the game are listed below:

Players can now order pizza without having to leave the computer with the
/pizza command (reference!).

Players can now go to the bathroom without having to leave the computer
with the /toilet command (nobody knows how Blizzard will implement this).

Blood Elves are now a playable race.

Draenei are now a playable race.

Zergs are now a playable race.

Shadowdancer is now a playable class (to be implemented as soon as
charges of plagiarism against Blizzard are cleared).

Black Knight is now a playable class (to be implemented as soon as charges of racism against Blizzard are cleared).

Players from Asia must now sign a declaration of property-handover to
Blizzard Entertainment (to be implemeneted as soon as charges of communism against Blizzard are cleared).

New item quality of "Really Focking Good" has been introduced.

New profession of Jewelcrafting.

New profession of Witch Hunting.

New profession of Sandwich Repair (reference!).

New profession of Drug Dealing (will be implemented after "Drugged" status effect has been implemented).

Players can now customize the appearance of their characters further to compensate for their acne-covered, overweight real-life counterparts.

Players can now choose the Uglie Nerd avatar as their default appearance.

Blizzard has added a health warning window that pops up every hour to advise players to take a rest. Players will have the option to toggle this warning off.

Server downtime will be more frequent to save Blizzard money and resources.

New servers will be introduced and then scrapped a month later to force players to restart and play more.

Players can now toggle on "Dark Mode" where the whole screen turns black but gameplay continues. Burning Crusade will be the first MMORPG to boast this "gameplay twist".

New 80-man dungeon called Wndwsxp where mobs have a chance of inflicting Blue Screen of Death on attack, permanently taking players out of battle (reference!).

Character levels are now uncapped to further encourage more playing (to be implemented as soon as Blizzard figures out how to fit 3 digits into a space only big enough for 2).

LIER Magazine gave Burning Crusade a 6.2/10 which, relatively speaking, makes it a worse game than Dr Mario on the original Gameboy which scored a 6.3/10. We must keep in mind that Dr Mario was reviewed by LIER 16 years after its release and that 6.3/10 was an extremely generous score. Considering the fact that nobody at the LIER office even plays World of Warcraft, we feel that a great injustice has befallen upon this world. Geeks all over the world have already begun rioting and locking themselves in their parents' basements over this horrible misjudgment.

Several die-hard WoW fans took it to the extreme by threatening to commit suicide using their World of Warcraft CD if LIER Magazine did not change their score. Unfortunately for these sorry individuals, LIER Magazine does not even exist and is simply the name of our fabricated sister-publication. Talk about fighting for a lost cause! Ha, ha, ha, oh mercy. Blizzard Entertainment has also come out and made a statement that their World of Warcraft CDs are child-safe and can cut through nothing except another World of Warcraft CD (ha, ha, ha, this is a reference).

The truth is that Burning Crusade is not really anything special as far as MMORPGs go, but it is however, another testament to the fact that the people in charge of marketting at Blizzard Entertainment are geniuses who have tapped into the minds of lifeless geeks all around the world. Bear in mind that there are actually people who play World of Warcraft who have a life (watch this beautiful 40 minute presentation by Joi Ito, explaining the benefits of World of Warcraft), and that anyone who has an absolute, discriminatory stance against World of Warcraft are stubborn bigots.

I've heard you people say, "World of Warcraft is so bad man, everyone who plays has no life and are sad." In reply, The Letter C offers you a big, "GTFO NOOBTRASH." Now watch that video, pathetic anti-WoW filth. In my objective journalistic stance, I can actually agree with all 40 minutes of that presentation and firmly believe that World of Warcraft is not the child of the devil and actually brings some worth to real life. Check out these statistics (the following statistics and paragraphs are not satire):

If you are the most respected player on the entirety of World of Warcraft,
8 million people will look up to you and respect you.

Very soon, that number will increase to 15 million.

But 6.5 billion people will think you are a loser with no life.

I think that this is horrible reflection on the ungraciousness of normal human beings all around the world. The prevalence of bigotry has increased dramatically over the past few years, most notably after September 11. Anyone who knows me well will know that I am anti-stereotype and anti-labelling. Stereotypes are simply the basis of my satire and my parodies. I am an activist of justice and harmony, a defender of what is right and what is truth. To see those who stand along side me take such an absolute stance on certain minorities is disconcerting and makes me think carefully about who I trust and agree with.

The opposite of bigotry would be tolerance, and that tolerance is something that nobody is born with, as it is with grace. And this is so terribly, terribly wrong. As I write this I wonder what has become of humanity, that the prejudice shown towards people (of all ages, not just teenagers and young adults) who play a video game can be compared to that of the bigotry exhibited towards Muslims or other select religions. The playerbase of World of Warcraft is more diverse than people initially imagine. Priests, US soldiers and housewives are just a few of the many kinds of people who enjoy this game for their own reasons.

*We interrupt this philosophical rant to bring you back to the funneh stuff:

In all honesty, The Letter C is neither for or against World of Warcraft. We ain't be playin' but we ain't be hatin' either. In fact, we encourage at least 2 hours a week, maybe a maximum of 5. If it was free, C would be on it socializing and spending more quality time with his dear brother Reuben. And if you remember our beautiful entry on World of Warcraft, we were only kidding when we said that "WoW" and "life" don't belong in the same sentence. We ain't going back on that XBox remark though.