am what you would consider a hardcore World of Warcraft player. Before that, it was EverQuest, with plenty of other games in between – from Dark Age of Camelot to Anarchy Online. One thing has been constant with every MMORPG I have ever played: Each expansion gradually destroys the thing that made the original game so fascinating.

There are many pitfalls that await an MMO expansion. Sometimes it’s the extra experience levels that ruin all the previous content; other times it’s a new race or class that throws off any semblance of game balance. Burning Crusade was unable to find a solution to the new levels and items that basically render the original content worthless (going back to the two old continents now feels like attending a funeral). However, it does manage to reinvent itself in many ways to make the expansion feel fresh and, on the whole, more engaging than the original.

This is obvious the moment you walk into Outland (the world where most of the new content is). The new zones are huge in comparison to the original game and graphically lush. But it’s the content inside them, the quests and the instances, that make the whole game tick.

Blizzard has worked very hard to create encounters and quests that not only offer content to the casual player, but to the hardcore player as well. The dungeons, which range from a five-man crawl to a 25-man raid, offer challenges for all types of players. This is especially true for the five-man content that offers a normal and heroic mode for those that want a bigger challenge from the game’s easier-to-complete content.

Before this review, I managed to get through the game’s five- and ten-man content and had started on the raid content. It’s very challenging at almost every level, with the best encounter design I have ever seen in a game of its ilk. Since Blizzard has been very stingy with its itemization, many of the “upgrades” you get in the game are more like “side-grades.” While unsatisfying to a degree, it does keep the challenge and interest in the game and doesn’t allow players to blast through the content in a matter of weeks – which, in this reviewer’s opinion, is a good thing.

However, like any MMORPG, Blizzard can always offer updates to smooth out the rough edges of the game, as is far too often the case, ruin the experience by catering to the clamoring masses begging for easier content.

My hope is that Blizzard doesn’t cave in, at least not for a long while, as The Burning Crusade is easily the best expansion to an MMO I have ever had the pleasure to play. From the thrill of soaring through skies on this game’s flying mounts to the rush of defeating Nightbane in the bowels of Karazhan, The Burning Crusade is a gaming itch that is a joy to scratch.