A Look back at the Burning Crusade

I don't know about you guys, but with the expansion coming out in less then a week I am starting to feel a little nostalgic. Now that the game is about to move on to a new chapter it is hard not to look back at the 2 years we played the Burning Crusade and think about both the highlights and the hard times. Here are some of my highlights and lowlights from the BC era of WoW.

Favorite 5-man Instance:
Shadow Labyrinth - The reason I like Shadow Labs is the variety of bosses. There were all fairly different and definitely presented a challenge before I would fully raid geared. I know a lot of people hated the ogre boss but everyone remembers him hand it was definitely a unique fight. Overall, Shadow Labs has an epic feel to it that was missing from a lot of the other 5 mans. It was one of the few instances I didn't mind running multiple times.

Least Favorite 5-man Instance:
This one is tough. I think I'm going to have to give two answers.

Auchenai Crypts - I leveled 3 toons to 70 in BC and never ran AC once on any of them, on either mode. I can't really say that it is my least favorite if I never ran it, but there has to be a reason for missing it. I would have assumed that some one would have pulled me in for a daily or a heroic or something if it was decent. However, it sounds like I wasn't missing much according to most of the people I've talked to.

Mana Tombs - This one is probably due to lack of experience also. I didn't run MT much also, but I don't remember anything particularly fun about this instance anyway.

Favorite 25-man Raid Boss:
Kael'thas Sunstrider - I have only killed him once but I really liked this fight. It has great variety and complexity. While it was fun downing bosses on the first or second day of trying them, it ultimately felt kind of hollow. Nothing was really accomplished. The Kael fight is much more involved. In my opinion it is more fun to learn the little complexities of the fights and feel the sense of accomplishment when you down him. Plus everyone gets to play around with Legendary items if for only a few minutes. Ultimately Kael was one of the few fights that had a truly epic feel to it. My only regret is that I couldn't get a guild first kill on him.

Least Favorite 25-man Raid Boss:
Void Reaver - I hate the orbs. It is that simple. VR was the fight I performed worst on consistently. I know it isn't ranged friendly, but I think it is particularly bad for moonkin since we have one of the longest cast Nukes in the game.

Favorite 10-man Raid Boss:
This is actually a tie.

Shade of Aran - This one is a little funny because I hated this fight early on because it is fairly hard and my computer always lagged out on it. However, after I got a better computer I started to appreciate it. It has a nice level of randomness and complexity that wasn't seen from a lot of the early bosses. It wasn't predictable but the randomness alone wouldn't wipe your raid like it would on Prince.

Jan'alai (Dragonhawk) - I really like the mini game. It provided a little tension but was beat able. Plus the trash leading up to him provided a little niche for moonkin. Yes, there are other ways to control the scouts but moonkin were probably best at it.

Least Favorite 10-man Raid Boss:
Netherspite - This one is a little funny because I thought it would be one of my favorite bosses after reading the strat. However, I think I have run it to many poor players or with very little organization. It seems like someone dies every single time. When I've run kara with my alts recently I'm just trying to get the fight over with.

Worst Moment in the Burning Crusade:
This one won't come as a surprise to anyone who knows me or has read this blog for a while. My worst moment in BC is clearly when Wandering Alliance broke up in January of 08. I lost some friends in that split and seriously considered quiting the game at that point. To be completely honest, I don't think I've had as much fun with a guild as I did with old WA since then. Don't get me wrong. I think LoE is great, and after I progress with them in WotLK and get to know some of the people better I will probably feel differently, but old WA was something special. Raids were focused but you could joke around a little. When not raiding you could hang out in vent and talk with people about different stuff. I guess I just felt closer to old WA then I have with any of my guilds since.

Most Shocking Moment in the Burning Crusade:
Logging into wow for raid and finding out that my guild no longer existed was very shocking. It wasn't really bad because I was kind of looking for a good way out, but shocking none the less. What made it so shocking was that it was completely unexpected. When most guilds fall apart you can see the cracks for a long time but the guild leaders hang on for dear life. In this situation there was drama leading up to it but none of it seemed to be a guild killer. Really the guild could have been saved, but there were a few straws that broke the camel's back and the GM decided to throw in the towel.

Best Moment in the Burning Crusade:
Killing Vashj was by far my best moment in BC. After my worst moment above a lot of people said that we wouldn't be able to rebuild into a guild that could clear SSC, but we did. On top of that she is such a tough fight, and is the toughest guild first kill I've had with a guild. Killing her felt like we had accomplished something as a team. I just wish she had dropped a druid token just once.

That's it for me right now. If there is something else I remember I will added it. What are some of our highlights of BC? Post them in the comments if you would like to share.

Toon Update:
Graylo - Lots and Lots of Sunwell. We have downed the Eredar Twins but it proved to be harder then I expected. Little things prevent us from killing them for a while. People would fall off the ledge or conflag the raid. It was very frustrating but it proves that even with the nerf you can't just walk into SWP and kill bosses. We eventually did pull it all together and down Twins with a little more then an hour left in raid.

With that we headed to Muru. In contrast, Muru wasn't nearly as difficult. It's not that complex of a fight. Its mainly a personal DPS race that has been mage much easier by the patch and the new WotLK talents. We were able to down him after only a few attempts and got the guild first kill the same night that we killed Twins.

Since then we have been working on Kil'jaeden. This is a great fight, but we haven't killed him yet. On the first night of attempts we were reliably getting him down to about 40% but couldn't go much farther. Our positioning was a little to spread out and we were a little to far away from the orbs when the spawned. We changed our positioning a little bit and the next night we tried him things went better. On our best attempt we got him down to 4% but were a little frustrated that we couldn't get him down. Our biggest problem now seems to be people not surviving long enough. I think we just need to just get a little more experience with the fight's mechanics and he will go down. The good news is that we have all tonight to get it done, and there is a general consensus that we will continue to raid until he is down since we are running out of time. Wish us luck.

Graypal - He is just waiting for the expansion and DEing stuff. I'm still thinking about turning him Holy at 80.

Grayfel - I've been running as many raids with him as I can to get gear. He has been through ZA and Kara a couple of times but the real luck came when I got into a guild TK pug. A couple of guildies wanted to see if we could short hand VR and I got my lock into the raid. It went remarkably well. We ended up 15 manning VR and I got the T5 shoulders. We then decided to go on to Solarion and 10 manned her, and I got the caster legs that drop off of her. All in All it was a good night for my lock. I also now have over 150 badges and will spend them soon to replace some of my remaining holes in my gear.

Grayvik - The little mage is coming along nicely. He is just short of 30 and doing pretty well. I'm starting to get an hand of how to survive with him, and I am enjoying his progress. I doubt he will progress much over the next few weeks/months, but I am looking forward to getting him to max level.

Leveling Guides:
For those of you that don't know, I am a big fan of leveling guides. I leveled Graylo from 30 - 60 using Jamie's guides at WoW-Pro.com. I then used Brian Kopps Alliance guide to get Graylo from 60 - 70. I also used it to get Graypal and Grayfel from 1 - 70, and have used it for my mage also. For the most part I think it is a great guide, but I am considering using a different one after the expansion for a couple of reasons.

First, he is charging for the WotLK upgrade. This gives me a good reason to look around at my other options. Second, he hasn't said anything about if his guide will be available on Thursday when the game is released. This has made me a little nervious since I don't want to try and pick up a guide in the middle.

So, I'm wondering if any of my readers have experience with any of the other guides available. I am leaning towards trying the Zygor Leveling guides. The addon they have created to display the guide looks really nice and they say it is ready for Thursday. Have any of you tried the Zygor guides or some other Leveling guide I should look at? If so, please post in the comments what you thing about them.