Week of WoW: The Burning Crusade - Day 3: Hellfire Peninsula

As we continued to wander the barren Hellfire Peninsula, we turned to our quest log for guidance as to where we should head next. Bumbling along with no idea where anything was had long been missing from our World of Warcraft experience, but we were ecstatic to find ourselves in a completely undiscovered country. The General Chat channel blossomed with the questions of newbs and the answers of veterans who must have been playing since the alpha version of the game.

Ticking through our rapidly growing list of quests, one grabbed us by the heart strings. A Draenei named Seer Kryv had asked a favor of us while we were out gallivanting across the parched landscape of Hellfire Peninsula. He asked that we take a vial of Draenei Holy Water and consecrate some of the bones of the fallen Draenei along the Path of Glory. Thinking this an easy task, we rode out to see this path fashioned from the mighty warriors' bones.

We arrived at the Path of Glory and nearly toppled off our mechanostrider. Aghast, we stared off into the distance - this was no path, this was a gigantic thoroughfare stretching off as far as we could see comprised of the shattered remains of hundreds of thousands of once-proud Draenei. The carnage that must have taken place in order to produce this road of ruin staggered us like a fist in the stomach, and we were reminded of the immense sadness we felt for the Blood Elves' lost glory.

Gazing down the Path of Glory, a realization struck us. As the first expansion to World of Warcraft (nearly qualifying as a sequel), the Burning Crusade is somewhat analogous to the fifth episode (originally the second) of Star Wars, the one packed with downers called the Empire Strikes Back. This is World of Warcraft's second act - in the first act you set up the backstory, but in the second act things start falling apart. All of the happy go lucky characters you've known and loved from World of Warcraft are getting a serious dose of tragic reality - let's face it, war sucks and it's been going on here in Outland for centuries... and it shows.

But not every part of Outland is terminally screwed, as we discovered when we ventured deeper into the zone. Of course, you'll have to come back tomorrow if you want to know more, because that's when we unveil the magical realm of Zangarmarsh and the perilous beauty within its mushroom capped forests.