If you just got to level 60 and you are continuing through the Dark Portal, you will find the rewards from the “low level” instances there are really good - close to most epic equipment players could obtain from 40 man high-level instances before expansion. But if you are already a veteran to lvl 60, you will find little items of use. All the instances are 5 man up to level 70, and the maximum raid members in a high-end instance then will be 25. So by lowering the number required to do those instances, guilds are insured more committed members will do a better job, and not have 10 people slacking and everyone else dragging them in instances because they are needed on a certain boss. I totally agree with this move on Blizzards side, even if some guilds may be broken because of this.

At level 70 rewards tend to get better, but the best ones you can get are on “Heroic” difficulty. I will explain: You are required to do certain quests or faction reputation in order to obtain a key to a previously plaid instance (on “Normal” mode. Once you get that key, you can unlock the “Heroic” difficulty for that particular instance, with harder monsters and bosses, but with rewards to match. This insures great replayability to the lower level instances. Most of the quest reward items have a thing in common: they have a lot of +Stamina on them, so in a way Blizzard is ensuring that battles will last longer. Character progression isn't that strong in stats, so equipment and talent points matter more now. And of course - player skill.

PVP, “Balance” and New Talents

When I say PvP, I take into consideration tow different things: world PvP and arena/battleground PvP. Comparing to the previous world PvP system found in the original World of Warcraft, not much has changed in The Burning Crusade. Each map now has its PvP objectives and you can gather wining can give you tokens that can be eventually exchanged for rewards. Objectives vary but you can still group them all in the general category of “capture and hold the most strategic points”. For some reason this doesn't seem to work that good, and players choose either not to play these “mini games”, or just take turns - horde and alliance - in capturing the objectives, thus making token gathering faster. However, the rewards are not that earthshaking, so most of the players prefer to do quests together, or they go into battlegrounds for PvP.

Regarding battlegrounds, a gladiator arena and a new battleground have been introduced. The 3 old battlegrounds have been extended 10 more levels, from 61 to 70, but no additional rewards can be purchased from them. The gladiator arena is innovative for Warcraft, and involves tow groups of 2vs2, 3vs3 or 5vs5 players fighting each other in a tight gladiator arena. The rewards are pretty good and you can just team up with a couple of buddies and start gaining arena points and get your team rank up in the top.

The new 15vs15 battleground - Eye of the Storm - is a mixture of capture the flag and capture strategic points. There are four towers, and the road between them is square-shaped. In the middle point of the map there is a single flag. You need to capture some strategic points, then take the flag from the middle to a friendly tower. Repeat until victory/defeat. It's a fun battleground, but Arathi Basin is still, in my opinion, the most strategic one.