Bonuses to basic attributes such as strength, stamina, agility, and intellect are now augmented by bonuses to far more specific skills, such as attack power, dodge rating, and hit rating. Choosing gems for your socketed items gives you an opportunity to tailor your gear to your character's chosen talent spec and play style, and many classes even have multiple endgame armor sets to choose from now for the same reason. For the most part, these items are quite hard to come by, though, since they rarely drop from anything but dungeon bosses and the like. Skilled crafters can make items that have empty sockets for gems, and you'll occasionally be offered them as a reward for completing a quest. As your skills improve (and the materials you need become less common and more expensive), you'll learn to make powerful trinkets, rings and necklaces that can be used to buff the attributes of other party members as well as your own, a handful of weapons, and gems that can be socketed into new pieces of armor and jewelry to make them even more powerful. As a jewelcrafter, you'll initially spend your time and resources making simple rings and necklaces that afford their wearers small attribute bonuses.

Every profession in the game serves a purpose, but many of the items that can be made by weaponsmiths and tailors, for example, are no better than those that regularly drop from enemies and subsequently appear in major cities' auction houses. All of the existing professions such as leatherworking, alchemy, cooking, and enchanting can now be pursued to a maximum skill level of 375, which is also true of the new jewelcrafting profession.Īlong with engineering, jewelcrafting is undoubtedly one of the most interesting and useful professions to pursue in World of Warcraft right now. Furthermore, Outland is the only place where you can advance your chosen professions beyond the previous skill cap of 300 to gather all-new resources and craft powerful new items. It's conceivable that you could advance through many of the levels post-60 without ever visiting the new Outland realm, but it'd be a far more time-consuming and less profitable process because quests in Outland offer significantly more experience points and gold. It's only possible to advance beyond the original game's level 60 cap if you own The Burning Crusade, which unlocks new player skills and talents for characters through to level 70. Thereafter, the new races join the rest on one of Azeroth's two continents, where there are more than enough quest-filled environments and dungeons to keep you busy to level 60 and beyond. Like the eight previously existing playable races in Azeroth, the blood elves and the draenei begin their adventures in specially designed starter areas where you can play without having to worry about bothersome high-level opposing players for the first 15 to 20 levels of your character's existence. Both of these races have quite fascinating backstories that are revealed both through their respective intro movies and via in-game quests and conversations with non-player characters. Perhaps the most significant additions introduced in The Burning Crusade are the blood elves and the draenei-two new playable races that have made the paladin class available to the Horde faction and the shaman class available to the Alliance faction for the first time. It offers a lot more of the same, and it also adds a number of new features that can be enjoyed by newcomers and level 60 veterans alike. Like any great expansion pack, The Burning Crusade doesn't just offer more of the same, and it doesn't cater exclusively to experienced players. Now Playing: World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Video Review By clicking 'enter', you agree to GameSpot's

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