Week of WoW: The Burning Crusade - Day 2: The Blood Elves

The Horde side of the game doesn't feature as much encouragement or guidance as the Alliance faction, and this is carried over and accentuated in the Burning Crusade expansion. Where the Draenei have constant support, the Blood Elves must survive through sheer force of will. You want to learn cooking? You'd better find a trainer yourself (although, inside Silvermoon Stronghold you can ask a guard).

Outside the sheltered Sunstrider Isle, we encountered majestic structures packed with vicious and insane Blood Elves that had succumbed to an irresistible thirst for magical energy. We fought our way through the not-so-ancient Blood Elf ruins to find a small settlement of Blood Elves attempting to retake their lost territory from the Wretched (the twisted, magic-drunk Blood Elves).

Traveling south, we turned to look back at the ruins only to realize that what we had thought were ruins were actually the remnants of a good half of the original Silvermoon City, the Blood Elf capital. Bisecting the Blood Elf controlled half of Silvermoon City from the Wretched infested side was the Dead Scar, a strip of fouled land the size of a river which we discovered was the path the Lich King Arthas had taken when he sacked Silvermoon (a bit of history from previous Warcraft games).