World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade on January 16 2007

January 16 2007 will be the biggest date for 8 million PC gamers worldwide.

Thus marks the end of gamer social life for the next few months. For the next several weeks, more 8 million players around the world will be engaged in getting from level 60 – 70, training skills, doing the Eye of the Storm battleground and increasing reputation with the different factions.

I remember the first few weeks after buying World of Warcraft. It was February 2005 and I had a consultancy status with another company. This allowed me to come in at any time for work – and you guessed it. I spent most, if not all of my time exploring the huge expanse of Azeroth with several dozen other players from around the world.

Now I am back to being a consultant, and timely as it is I started playing again thanks to Kiven who got me a 60 day game card last Christmas. And so after a long hiatus, I’m farming honor, reputation and getting my skills up to 300 in time for the expansion. And the best thing about this new development is that everybody basically starts from scratch in terms of equipment since the current “purple” (epic) gear are crap compared to the standard level 65 weapons and armor you’ll find all over the place. My god, I can’t wait to do 10 more levels!

I’m obviously babbling. It’s due to the excitement of being a kid again with his video games. From a financial perspective, spending PHP 800.00 a month versus several thousand pesos on dinners and clubbing makes much more sense too 🙂

Here are some screen shots of the expansion.