Raiding re-written for Warcraft

Monday 14 August 2006
The Burning Crusade, Blizzard's expansion pack for the massively multiplayer World of Warcraft, will limit raids to a max of 25 characters and fundamentally change the Player-vs-Player setup.

Currently, most dungeons offer 40-man raids, attracting huge groups of characters. But Blizzard's focus with The Burning Crusade is on smaller runs and higher level action, and several locations will even offer five-man-maximum raids for hardcore gamers at levels 60 or 70.

As for PvP, you'll now be collecting honour points from encounters to buy equipment, or you can earn more valuable gear in the new Gladiatorial Arena, a team-based combat zone. Brilliantly, WoW's Player-vs-Player action has been woven into the world itself with PvP objectives - persistent neutral zones that can be fought over and controlled by both factions.

World of Warcraft continues to amass a gigantic gathering of followers and The Burning Crusade should take the attraction a step further. After this, who can resist the call of WoW?

Ben Richardson is a former Staff Writer for Official PlayStation 2 magazine and a former Content Editor of GamesRadar+. In the years since Ben left GR, he has worked as a columnist, communications officer, charity coach, and podcast host – but we still look back to his news stories from time to time, they are a window into a different era of video games.