There’s certainly been a rise of chatter among the WoW Classic community these days regarding The Burning Crusade. This is partially because of a pent-up demand for a return to that expansion and an anticipation that this will happen on the anniversary servers later this year. It’s a very specific Classic period that brought in a raft of changes and additions, and there’s a bunch of nostalgia tied up in all of that.
However, I’ve noticed that most all of this talk centers around the same topics: the class changes, the new races and class combos, Outland, the raid changes, leveling improvements, and flying. What never seems to get talked about these days is how Burning Crusade brought us some of the absolute best starting zones in the game. I aim to rectify that today.
It’s almost as if everyone had collective amnesia over these regions, yet it shouldn’t be. The Burning Crusade didn’t only release with the seven new zones of Outland, but it also came with four additional starting regions designed to get Blood Elf and Draenei characters from level 1 to 20.
Sitting here in 2025, that strikes me as a huge amount of effort on the part of Blizzard. Consider that the studio could’ve merely done the Allied Race thing and done some brief instanced introduction to the new races before dumping them out into the same-old newbie areas. But it didn’t, did it? The studio went above and beyond to craft a huge chunk of leveling content for only two races.
Now granted, Blizzard knew darn well that these were both going to be highly popular races, and in fact, both Blood Elves and Draenei continue to be some of the most-rolled races in Retail to this day. That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the effort.
When The Burning Crusade originally launched back in early 2007, I made strong memories of coming home from the Gamestop midnight release, installing the new content, and then sitting there in an agonizing uncertainty of whether I should leap into Outland or start up one of the new races.
Anticipating that so many more people would be pouring through the Dark Portal, I went with the latter and made my first (of many) Draenei Shaman. Touching down on Azuremyst Isle was a sensory overload in those early hours of launch day. The haunting music, the alien intrusion upon the landscape, the first encounters with the Blood Elves as enemies — all of that mixed together to create an immediately immersive experience.
Understand that by 2007, we’d spent over two years becoming incredibly well-acquainted with vanilla’s starting zones. Those were great and fine and all, but they weren’t nearly this exotic or detailed. World of Warcraft’s first expansion did a lot to overhaul questing flow, and you could see this right away in the improved experience of Azuremyst, Bloodmyst, Eversong Woods, and Ghostlands.
The studio used the dual pairings of these starter zones to tell an overarching narrative that spanned the first 20 levels. Phasing and scripting were far more prominent, and the visuals definitely were kicked up a notch over the older beginner areas.
I also like how each of these pairings mirrors each other in several ways. They both tell the story of a race that’s being introduced to the wider world and their respective factions, and so there’s a “breaking out” narrative at work. But both sets also put a gorgeous zone up front followed by a more corrupted region afterward to establish rising conflict and tension.
Considering how retail WoW has all but done away with most all of the older starting zones in favor of a single newer one, I think it’s heartening to see how WoW Classic is keeping these experiences alive for fresh generations to enjoy in the modern age.
Stepping back into the MMO time machine of WoW Classic, Justin Olivetti offers up observations and ground-level analysis as a Gnome with a view. Casually Classic is a more laid-back look at this legacy ruleset for those of us who’ve never stepped into a raid or seen more than 200 gold to our names.
