Play With Sexy Elves in World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade

Author's Rating:

Pros: Fun game.  Lots of things to do.

Cons: Monthly fee.  Time consuming.  Some players are jerks.

The Bottom Line: 
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade is a fun, entertaining MMORPG that is worth checking out.

Author's Review
I enjoy video games, though I tend to have trouble with being able to accomplish certain things in some of them.  I had heard some people talking about World of Warcraft, but I didn't know much about it for a while.  I eventually learned that the game is a MMORPG - Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game - made by Blizzard Entertainment.  Once I learned more about the game, I became more interested in it.  I have now been playing the game for close to three years.  When I started playing, the first expansion, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, was out.

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade is the first expansion pack for World of Warcraft.  The expansion will not work if the original game isn't installed first.  World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade adds a lot of new things to the original game.  When I started to play the game, I installed the original game and the expansion at the same time.  I decided to do that so that I could have access to everything as I leveled up my characters.  Since I did it that way, I have decided to cover some of the basics of the game as well as things specific to the expansion.  

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade is a big game and there can be issues with lag if the computer it is installed on isn't powerful enough.  I have a Dell XPS 210 computer and I haven't had any major issues.  An internet connection is required to play the game, and depending on how many people are logged on, that can cause stability issues or lag as well.  I have had the game crash on at times, but for the most part, it works well for me. 

Usually, there is some kind of maintenance on Tuesdays.  When that is going on, the game can't be played.  New patches are released every so often and they have to be downloaded and installed before the game can be played.  Sometimes the patches are rather small and just address certain bugs.  Other times, they are larger and introduce new things like new dungeons or raids.  After the larger patches, the game sometimes is unstable for a day or two.  Every so often, when there are more problems that cause the game to be done for longer periods of time - like a day or longer - Blizzard will give players credit for that time.

Like all computer programs, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade has system requirements.  The game will run if the minimum requirements are met, but the performance of the game probably won't be the best.  People that have an older system can adjust some of the video settings so that the game will run better.  Doing that will lower the quality of the graphics.  The game will work on PC or Mac.  I have only played it on PC.  The system requirements can be found online.  The ones I found online recently are different than the ones in my game manual.  A faster, more powerful computer will run the game better.  The game can be played in full screen mode or windowed mode.  I use windowed mode because it makes it easier for me if I want to look up a map or additional information about a quest online.

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade was released in a standard edition and a collector's edition that comes with bonus items like a DVD about the development of the game and an art book that has illustrations of concept art.  I was able to find a copy of the collector's edition at a reasonable price when I got mine.  The regular version is still easily found at fairly reasonable prices.  The collector's edition is harder to find and the prices are extremely high now.  The collector's edition came with the CD and DVD discs for the game.  I used the DVD to install so I didn't have to worry about changing discs.  The installation didn't take that long, but once that was done, I had to download and install several patches so my game would be current.  That took a lot longer.

Once I had all the patches downloaded and installed, I was able to go through the process of creating an account.  The manual talks about people upgrading their existing accounts.  I can't remember if I had to do that part or not since I was installing the original game and this expansion at the same time.  I had to set up an account name and password and enter the authentication codes from my games.  Since the game requires a $15 monthly fee to play, the billing information has to be entered before the game can be played.  The fee can be paid by credit card, Pay Pal, or prepaid game cards from Blizzard.

People just upgrading to World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade are ready to start playing at this point.  People that started the game like me will need to go through the process of creating a character.  There are different realms, or servers, that people play on.  Someone can have a maximum of ten characters on a realm and fifty characters per account.  Only one character per account can be logged on at a time.  People can have more than one account if they want, but there is a separate $15 charge for each account.  

Realms

There are normally four different types of realms for the game.  Player vs Environment or Normal (PvE), Player vs Player (PvP), Roleplaying (RP), and Roleplaying Player vs Player (RP-PVP).  Every so often, the test realm will be available that allow players to test out new things before they are released in patches.  I play on a PvE realm and I just fight the various monsters and complete quests.  The PvP option can be turned on, and that will allow players from the Alliance and Horde to fight each other.  There are battlegrounds where people can go to for PvP fighting.  I've done that a few times, but I don't really like it.  Going into one of the capital cities for the opposing faction will automatically trigger PvP on.  Once it is on, a person can be attacked by a member of the opposing faction.  In a PvP realm, PvP is basically always active, so players can be attacked not only by the monsters in the game, but other players at any time.  From what I understand, on the RP realms, players are involved in more role playing with their characters and are supposed to stay in character all the time.  

Factions

There are two playable factions in World of Warcraft, the Alliance and the Horde.  With the original game, there were four races as part of each faction.  World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade adds one new Alliance and one new Horde race.  The races all look and act differently and have different strengths.  The races for the Alliance are dwarves, gnomes, humans, night elves and draenei.  The Horde races are orc, troll, tauren, undead, and blood elves.  The draenai and blood elves are the new races for the expansion.  When the characters are created, players can go through several options to customize their look.  More options have been added since I started playing the game.  There are many other groups, or factions, that players will come into contact with while playing the game.  Many of those factions are tied to either the Horde or Alliance, though some are considered neutral.

Classes

What class a character is determines what sort of abilities they have, what weapons they use, and what type of armor they will be able to wear.  The armor has different strengths depending on the type is.  As characters fight different creatures, the armor and weapons are damaged - or have the durability reduced.  Those things can be repaired at certain vendors.  The more damaged the items are, the more it costs to fix.  Characters have to learn how to use their weapons too.  Some classes can only be chosen by certain races. 

When I started playing, there were nine classes available to choose from - druid, hunter, mage, paladin, priest, rogue, shaman, warlock, and warrior.  I personally find some of the classes more complicated to play because of the way their attacks work.  When first starting with a new character, the things to do are easier and they do help to introduce the different attacks and abilities.  Before World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade came out, only Alliance characters could be paladins and only Horde characters could be shamans.  The draenei can be shamans and blood elves can be paladins.  Some of the classes have powerful healing spells while others can cause a huge amount of damage to an enemy.  Mages eventually learn how to teleport to different areas and to open portals for other characters.  Hunters can tame animals who then fight alongside them.  Warlocks can summon different types of demons to help them fight.  

Professions

Players can choose to have their characters learn different professions.  Each character can learn two primary professions and three secondary professions, but it isn't required to learn any.  There are gathering professions, like mining, skinning and herbalism in which characters gather items that can be used in another profession to make or enhance things.  The materials can also just be sold either to a vendor or in the auction house.  With crafting or production professions, characters learn how to create various items, like weapons, potions, or armor.  The created items can be used by the character or sold unless they are bound to that particular character.  Some items in the game, called soulbound, can only be used by the character who first receives it or creates it.  With the crafting professions, it is usually helpful to choose a specific gathering profession to help get supplies.  Otherwise, all the necessary items to create things will have to be bought.  World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade adds jewelcrafting as a new profession.  The gems that are created can be added to different armor to make it stronger.  Some races get a skill bonus for certain professions.

The secondary professions - cooking, fishing, and first aid - allow characters to create things that can be helpful.  People with cooking can cook different types of food instead of having to buy it from vendors.  The food will raise a character's health if it is low.  Higher level food sometimes will raise a character's strength, stamina, or other stat for a specific amount of time, temporally making the character stronger.  Hunters will need to feed their pets every so often, and if they can cook, they are able to cook food for the pets as well.  Fishing is easy to do, but it does take time to build up.  The different fish that can be caught around the world can be used in recipes.  Sometimes other useful items are caught with fishing.  With first aid, characters can make bandages out of different types of cloth that drop from some of the creatures.

Trainers

Characters need to visit trainers every so often to learn new things.  There are specific trainers for each class and profession.  The class trainers teach new attacks, abilites, or spells.  As a character goes up in level, the class trainers will have new things to teach them.  The training does cost money, and at higher levels, it does get expenseive.  The profession trainers basically just give the character the ability to do a profession.  After that, depending on the profession, the character can then start gathering things or buy recipes or plans to learn.  Once the recipes are learned, a character can create that specific item if they have all the components.  Some things are more complicated than others to create.  Some recipes or plans will drop from different creatures in the world.  There are levels for the professions that go up as characters use the profession.  The gathering professions are really easy to level up since it just requires gathering the different items to increase the levels.  Production professions have to create different things to raise the level.

Azeroth

Azeroth is the world where World of Warcraft takes place.  With the original game, there were two continents, Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor.  Each continent has several zones.  I tend to think of the zones as countries or states.  Some of them are Alliance areas, some are Horde, and there are others areas that cities or settlements from both factions and are considered contested.  Characters start out in areas that are just for their faction.  Each zone has a different look and different types of creatures.  Many of the zones are beautiful.  Even the areas that are more bleak looking still have a lot of detail to them.  The level of creatures change from zone to zone with a few zones having the same level of creatures, so players do have some flexibility in choosing where to go when leveling up their characters.  Some zones span many levels and other only a few.  There were times when I had to do go to one area for a while, go somewhere else for a level or two, and then return to the first zone for another level or two.  There are some capital cities on both continents as well as one goblin run neutral city on each continent.  The capital cities have more vendors and trainers as well as access to other areas.

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade adds Outland as a new area for players to explore.  Characters have to be at least level 58 to travel there and they are intended to reach level 70 in these zones.  Technically, Outland isn't part of Azeroth.  It is the remains of the world that was originally the home of the orcs.  Characters have to use portals to travel there.  Outland has seven zones that all look very different from each other.  I really like the colors used in Zangermarsh, and think it is one of the most colorful areas in the game. 

Shattrath City is the capital of Outland and both factions can go there.  The city has portals to the capital cities on Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms.  Characters can access the bank here, but there is no auction house.  New areas in Eastern Kingdoms, tied to the blood elves, are accessible to characters.  Azuremyst Isle, an island off the coast of Kalimdor, is where the draenei capital city of Exodar is located.  There are other areas in Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor that players can't enter.

Basic Gameplay

Characters start out in different areas depending on what race they are.  In the starting areas, characters learn how to fight and learn some of the early training for their class.  Characters earn experience points for killing various creatures, discovering new areas, and completing quests.  The amount of experience gained depends on the level of the character and the area. If a character kills a creature that is many levels lower, they may not receive any experience at all.  With lower levels, if a creature is more than five levels lower than the character, no experience will be earned. 

Once enough experience points have been earned, the character will go up a level.  That increases a character's health and mana if they are a class that uses mana, as well as other stats, making the character slightly stronger.  Doing quests does make leveling up faster, though it can be done just by killing a lot of creatures in the world.  With the original game, characters could reach level 60.  World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade raises the level cap to 70.

Characters earn talent points as they level up.  The first one becomes available at level 10.  Until just recently, characters would get one additional talent point for every level.  The maximum number of talent points a character can earn has been reduced to 31 and there are now fewer options for using the points.  I'm still figuring out the new talents for some of my characters.  Every class has three talent trees that show a progression of attacks and abilities.  The talent points are used to activate the attacks or abilities.  Each of the talent trees for a class has a final special ability or talent that is unique for that talent tree.  The talents can help to make some attacks stronger in some way.  It is possible to redo the talents if a player later changes their mind, but that involves paying a fee to a trainer.  

In World of Warcraft, there are all kinds of different creatures that characters interact with in different ways.  Any creatures that aren't NPCs who fight back if attacked are considered monsters, including humans or creatures that look human.  There are various animals, demons, and human looking monsters that have to be dealt with.  In the world, the monsters roam all over the place, usually in groupings of various sizes.  Some of the mobs are more aggressive than others and can even pull in additional monsters to join in the fight.  Passive monsters will show a yellow name and they will only fight if they are attacked first.  Aggressive monsters have red names and they will attack with little to no warning.  Passing to close to some mobs will cause them to chase and try to attack.  Monsters that are a higher level than the player character will be harder to kill and give more experience points.  Characters fighting monsters that are several levels higher face a higher chance of being killed.  

Some types of monsters are harder to kill than other monsters of the same level because of the different types of attacks.  There are elite monsters in some areas that are very difficult to kill.  A level 60 elite will be much stronger than a normal level 60 character.  It usually isn't a good idea to take on an elite character alone unless you are a higher level than the elite.  Even then, it is still difficult.  In Hellfire Peninsula, the lowest level zone in Outland, there is a giant elite that walks around areas where players have to do quests.  That thing stepped on me and killed me instantly a few times because I didn't realize he was approaching until it was too late to get away.

The game has something called a rest state.  Rest builds up when characters are logged out of the game.  It builds up faster if the character logs out of an inn or from anywhere in a capital city.  Something called the hearthstone can be set to a specific inn by talking to the inn keeper.  The hearthstone can be used to teleport the character back to that inn from wherever they are in the game.  It could be used once an hour when I started playing the game, but that has been changed and it can be used every half hour now.  While a character is rested, they gain more experience from killing creatures in the game.  When the rest bonus runs out, the character will go back to receiving the normal amount of experience for killing creatures.  Quests pay the same amount of experience regardless of if the character is rested or not.  If characters are playing together in a group, they share the money and experience.  There are a few options for deciding who gets any other loot that drops in those situations.

Characters can die.  When that happens, their ghost - or wisp for night elves - spawns at a graveyard when the spirit is released.  If the ghost gets back to the body, it can resurrect the body.  The character's health will be half of the maximum amount, so it is a good idea to eat immediately.  While in the ghost or wisp form, players can see if there are any monsters near their body.  If there are, it is a good idea to wait because a character is vulnerable right after resurrection.  When playing with a group of characters, there are classes than can resurrect the dead.  There is also the option to use the spirit healer in the graveyard.  Doing that, while more convenient at times, causes a durability loss to all armor and weapons and gives the character resurrection sickness.  That lowers the character's health and abilities until the sickness wears off.

When the monsters are dead, their bodies can be looted.  The corpse may give money or items like articles of armor, food, or potions.  Characters start out earning copper and slowly work up to silver and then gold as they fight higher level monsters.  Only so many items can be carried, depending on how many bags the character has.  There are different types of bags that will hold different amounts of items.  There are also bags that will only hold specific things like plants or items needed for some professions.  Armor and weapons take up one spot each in the bags.  Other things, like food or potions, can stack several items in one spot.  It is a good idea to regularly visit a vendor to sell things that aren't needed to keep the bags from getting full.

There are banks in the capital cities and a few neutral cities that both factions can visit.  Characters start out with twenty-eight storage slots in their bank.  There are seven bag slots that can be purchased.  Once bags are added to those spots, they provide additional storage.  The price of the bag slots goes up for each one.  No money can be stored in the bank.  The bank is helpful for storing extra items that may be needed at higher levels.  The same cities that have banks also have auction houses where characters can buy and sell different items.  Some players make a lot of gold selling things at the auction house.  Prices at the auction house will vary from realm to realm.

Talking to NPCs involves reading text, though when a vendor is clicked on, they do ask how they can help.  Characters aren't actually heard talking in the game.  Sometimes, a voice will be heard saying that the character can't do something.  The voice sounds different for every race.  Music plays during the game and the volume can be adjusted within the game.  I do like the music, though most of the time I don't have the speakers on my computer on when I play the game.  During fights, there are all sorts of battles sounds that differ depending on the type of weapons being used.  Different creatures make different sorts of noises, some of which are kind of disturbing or shocking.  Once in a while, usually as part of a quest, some sort of scene plays out, and sometimes, voices are heard during those parts.  In some areas, an enemy is heard yelling about something every so often.

Map

While playing the game, a map can be opened by pressing the m key.  That will show the zone the character is currently in.  Unfortunately, the areas that a character hasn't gone to yet will not be filled in on the map until the characters has gone there.  I really think that is unhelpful, especially when I'm trying to find a specific spot in an area my character hasn't gone to yet.  It is possible to look up filled in versions of the maps online, and I've done that more than once.  A map that isn't filled in just doesn't help me.  Because of how the map is, I have accidently taken a character into an enemy area a few times.

Travel

Traveling can take up a lot of time in World of Warcraft.  When characters first start out, they have to run everywhere and that is slow.  I did get annoyed when I had to keep running back and forth between some areas when I was leveling up a character.  All the capital cities as well as several other settlements have what are called bird points.  Characters can use those to fly between different spots, paying a varying amount depending on how far the character is going.  It is sort of like a taxi or other form of public transportation.  Unfortunately, characters have to actually run to a settlement or city and click on the bird point to learn it before they can use it to fly between locations.  When traveling to new areas, it is usually safer to stay on the roads or paths at first.  Monsters do sometimes wonder across the roads and will attack, so it is a good idea to be watching for that.  If a character runs into a zone that is for much higher level characters, the mobs will be more aggressive in trying to attack.  Alliance and Horde characters have different ways of traveling between the continents of Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor.  Alliance characters use a boat and Horde characters use a zeppelin.  Two neutral goblin run cities, where both factions can go, have a boat traveling between them.

Mounts

Once characters reach a certain level, then can visit a riding trainer and buy a mount.  Riding a mount is faster than running, so it does make it easier to travel when doing quests.  When I began playing the game, a character had to be level 40 to learn the lower level riding and level 60 to get the faster riding.  Those levels have since been lowered a few times in different patches.  For each race, there is a certain type of mount that comes in different colors for the two different speeds.  If a character wants a mount of a different race, they have to be exalted with that race.  For example, if a human wants to get one or all of the night elf tigers, then the human has to become exalted with Darnasas before they can buy those mounts.  Some of the other groups will give a mount at exalted and a few rare mounts drop from certain bosses.  

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade allows characters to learn to use flying mounts at level 70.  There are two speeds of those as well, with the training for the faster flying costing more gold.  The flying mounts can only be used in Outland.  They do make it easier to get around and there are some areas in Outland that require a flying mount to reach.  Several different types of flying mounts are available for characters to buy.  The flying mounts were very expensive when I first got them, but I think the cost has been lowered since then.

Quests

Quests are basically tasks that characters do.  Once they are completed and turned in, experience is gained.  If a character is at the max level when they complete a quest, they just receive money and possibly reputation with a group.  Most of the time, they also pay money and sometimes they give some kind of item.  Most of the quests are given out by nonplayable characters (NPCs).  Some items that are dropped by creatures begin quests and there are also wanted signs in different areas that can begin a quest.  NPCs that have an available quest will have a yellow exclamation mark over them.  Depending on what the quest is, the character may need to return to the same person to turn it in or go to someone else to do that.  When a quest is ready to be turned in, there will be a yellow question mark over the person it can be turned in to.

Some quests are very simple to do, involving just going and talking to someone.  Some require killing a certain number of a specific type of monster.  If there aren't many of those creatures around, it can take a long time to kill enough of them, especially if someone else is also doing the same quest.  Other quests want a certain number of items that drop from creatures.  Those quests can take a long time to finish if the drop rates aren't that good.  Some of the quests basically stand alone and others are part of longer quest chains.  With the quest chains, they have to be done in a certain order.  Certain classes have to do quests once they reach a specific level to learn a new ability or spell.

Players can read about a quest and then not accept it.  Even after a quest has been accepted, it can be abandoned from the quest log.  A quest that has been abandoned can be picked up again at a later time.  The quest log is what keeps track of the quests currently being worked on.  It opens a window that shows the list of quests and information about whichever one is selected.  A character can have twenty-five active quests at a time. 

How hard a quest is for a character depends on the level of the character and the level of the quest.  The title of the quests are color coded in the quest log by how difficult they are, with the hardest being red.  The harder a quest, the more experience points it will pay.  With harder quests, there is also a higher chance of dying or failing to complete the quest.  Many quests can be done by just one character, but some require a group to finish.  With some of the group quests, if characters go back once they are a higher level, they can finish the quest alone.  There are also quests tied to raids, dungeons, and the PvP battlegrounds.

Some quests are repeatable and can be done over and over.  Most of those types of quests help to raise a character's reputation with a group.  Repeatable quest givers have blue exclamation points and blue question marks show up when they are ready to be turned in.  Some repeatable quests are considered daily quests and can only be done once a day.  A character can do 25 daily quests each day.  Some dailies help to raise a profession, like cooking or fishing, and others raise reputation.  Seasonal quests turn up at specific times once a year.  They can be one time quests or dailies and many of them can be done over each year.  The seasonal quests usually give a good amount of experience for characters still leveling up.

Reputation

Characters gain or lose reputation with the various factions or groups in World of Warcraft by doing quests or killing certain creatures.  There are different levels to reputation, and as a character earns more with a group, special items may become available.  There aren't rewards for gaining reputation with some groups.  Higher reputations give a discount at vendors with groups, and that can add up to a decent savings once the reputation is at the highest level, exalted.  With some groups, if you gain reputation with them, you will lose reputation with their enemy group.  Depending on the group and their function, losing reputation with them might cause some difficulties when trying to accomplish other things in the game.  A reputation window, that can be accessed from the character window in the game, keeps track of all the reputations a character has. 

If a character is at the level cap and they finish a quest that pays reputation, they will still receive the reputation.  Quests tied to the main Alliance or Horde groups will normally pay the most reputation to one of the groups, usually whatever race the quest giver is.  In addition to the main reputation given, a little bit of reputation spills over to the other Alliance or Horde groups as well.  For some groups, it takes a really long time to build up reputation because the ways to gain it are more limited.  World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade adds several new groups that characters could gain reputation with.  Some groups have been removed from the game for some reason, or the ability to gain reputation with them has been removed.  

Guilds

World of Warcraft allows players to create or join guilds.  Members of guilds can work together to help with different things, like raise profession or character levels.  Some guilds have it set up so that they regularly run dungeons or raids while others are more casual.  Guilds get access to a guild bank.  The leader of the guild decides who can access different things in the guild bank.  Additional tabs can be purchased, though they get very expensive.  There are different ways for players to join guilds.  Some people create guilds just for their friends or alt characters.  Players can decide to quit a guild and guild leaders can decide to kick members out.

Dungeons and Raids

Dungeons are areas in the game, also called instances, that tend to be more difficult to get through.  I think all of them are set up for a group of players to do together initially.  Some of the lower level dungeons can be done alone by higher level characters.  The armor and other rewards from dungeons tend to be better than what players can get in other ways in the game.  With the way the dungeons are set up in World of Warcraft, each group who enters one has their own dungeon encounter to play.  No one who isn't in the group will be in there.  Raids are intended for larger groups of characters, usually at the max level, to complete.  There are 10 man and 25 man raids and at one time, there was at least one 40 man raid in the game.  I haven't done any raids, but I have heard that people with slower internet connections have trouble with the larger groups.  I haven't done many dungeons either.  I have more fun doing other things in the game.

Holiday Events

There are some holiday events every so often during the year.  More of these holiday events have been added since I first started playing the game.  These events may be tied to a real holiday or to a certain time of the year.  There are quests that can be done that pay gold and experience, depending on the level of the character.  Some of the quests or activities give out some interesting items, including rare mounts or special outfits.  For example, with Hallow's End, characters can trick or treat at an inn every hour.  There are a few quests that deal with the Headless Horseman and there is even a way to win his flying horse mount.  Some of the holidays only last a day or two, and others last several weeks.  I enjoy most of them, and try to do what quests I can for them.

Companion Pets and Other Items

Characters can collect things called companion pets.  Some people refer to these pets as vanity pets.  When summoned, the pets just follow the character around.  They don't take part in fights or really serve any purpose, but I find many of them cute.  Some of these companion pets drop from specific creatures and others can be bought from vendors.  World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade adds a few different companion pets, including one that only people who bought the collector's edition of the game received.  There are some other items in the game that characters can get that don't really do anything tied to leveling.  They just do fun things for when player feel like acting silly with their characters.  There have been a lot of World of Warcraft trading card games, and in each one, there have been cards with codes for items that can be redeemed in the game.  Some of the items are useful like mounts, and other things are just for fun, like a pinata that drops candy.  

Character and Player Interaction

Since players have the option of creating several characters, it only makes sense that there are ways for those characters to be able to interact.  If the characters are on the same realm and part of the same faction, the characters can send items and gold to each other through the in game mail system.  Mailboxes are in all of the capital cities as well as most of the smaller settlements.  A player with multiple characters on the same realm can share some items between the characters.  Players can also use the mail system to communicate with other players.  There is a small charge to send mail, and the amount will go up if items are included in the mail. 

Since two characters from the same account can't be logged on at the same time, the only other way for them to exchange items or money is through a guild bank if they are both members of the same guild and both have the ability to withdrawn things.  There are some special extra items that are considered account bound and every character on the account will get one.  These items are usually companion pets or special mounts.  Once one character is at a higher level, they can provide some resources to lower level characters that do help out a lot while leveling the additional characters.  

Players are able to chat with other players from within the game.  There is a general chat channel that characters in the same area can talk on.  When in one of the busier locations, the general chat can get busy and at times much of it is nonsense.  Players can have more private conversations with each other by using the whisper option.  There are special chat options for guilds and for groups.  Alliance and Horde characters can't understand each other, though some players find a way to get around that and they still manage to communicate.  Several emote options are available, and those can be done to a member of the opposing faction.  Some are nice and others are rather rude and nasty.  

Since World of Warcraft is a MMORPG, there all kinds of people playing the game at any given time.  Players can interact with each other in different ways.  Some people work together to finish quests and level up.  I have seen people doing quests in the same general area without interfering with other players.  That is what I do when playing the game.  I am just trying to finish my quests and I don't set out to irritate other players in the area.  Unfortunately, there are some jerks who seem to only like to annoy other players.  I have had characters jump in front of me to take a kill.  I have had some rude characters keep standing in front of my character or even standing on top of her while riding one of the large mounts.  When I would move, they would move as well, once again blocking my view.  That sort of behavior is really annoying.  Thankfully I haven't had to deal with that too much.  In my experience, the players that have acted the rudest to me have been from the opposing faction, though some from my own faction are jerks too.  Players have the option of dueling each other almost everywhere in the game.  Members of the same faction can duel and members of opposing factions can duel.  I don't bother doing that because it doesn't interest me.

Support

I haven't had any major issues with World of Warcraft that would require me to contact support for the game.  There is a way to do that from the website and there are official forums for the game where people ask questions or report some issues.  Support can also be contacted through email and there are different email address for different specific issues.  From within the game, there is an option to report a bug or request help from someone called a Game Master (GM).  I have reported one or two small issues with quests not working like they were supposed to and I did always get a response back from someone at Blizzard.  GMs are customer support representatives and there are supposed to be GMs online in the game all the time.  I've never contacted one, so I have no idea how long it takes for a GM to respond and handle an issue.

In November of 2008, a third expansion to the game, World of Warcraft: The Wrath of the Lich King was released.  About a month before the expansion was released, a massive patch came out that launched some of the new things for the expansion, like the achievement system.  With that, characters earn achievements for all kinds of things, from completing a certain number of quests, to learning different cooking recipes.  A new profession called inscription also became available with the patch.  Things keep changing with World of Warcraft since new things are added every few months.  Sometimes the new things adjust how certain spells or abilities work, which will make a class either stronger or weaker.  It does help to keep the game fun and entertaining by adding new things fairly often, though it can be difficult to keep up with everything, especially if a player has several characters.

World of Warcraft can be a fun or frustrating game.  I enjoy it, though I don't obsess about getting the best armor and weapons for my characters.  I really enjoyed the new things that World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade added to the game.  It is worth picking it up to be able to continue to experience new things.  People do need to have it installed before the second expansion, World of Warcraft: The Wrath of the Litch King, can be installed. 

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