It's eerie how World of Warcraft Classic continues to feel like a wormhole into a bygone gaming era; I was sure the magic of WoW Classic wouldn't repeat itself when it launched in 2019, but I was wrong. After a few hours of questing, I joined a random group of strangers to tackle one of the new dungeons available in Burning Crusade Classic, which was supposed to take 20 minutes but ended up turning into a four-hour marathon, with a few hours of "I'm not sure how much longer I can do this. When I finally crawled into bed at 3 a.m., not only did I have new loot for my undead warlock, but I also had a whole new guild to play with. [This is the enduring black magic of World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Classic. In the crucible of soul-crushing grinding and relentless combat, players collide like atoms, sparking chain reactions that regularly result in new friendships. But sustaining such an ongoing reaction requires unfathomable sacrifices of time and energy. The Burning Crusade Classic is wonderful, but to experience it all, one must devote a significant portion of one's life.

When I first reviewed WoW Classic in 2019, what made this game easy to recommend was its accessibility. For a monthly subscription fee, anyone could start up a new character, taking me back to the early days of the MMOs on which Blizzard was founded. For old "Warcraft" veterans, it was a long-held wish come true, and for new players, it was a virtual tour of one of the most important chapters in PC gaming history. Regardless of how much time was spent, everyone gained something from the experience.

Not so with Burning Crusade Classic, where even exploring seven new zones requires a level 58 character, and a casual player could spend months on a quest. Or, if you pay $35 for a ridiculously overpriced one-time level boost and get garbage equipment and a pittance of gold, you'll barely survive your first few quests in the Outlands... I'm not opposed to Blizzard charging for shortcuts, but this is It's like paying a lot of money for a historical tour of Rome, only to be handed a crumpled MapQuest printout and cheap travel-sized sunscreen.

Burning Crusade Classic is a special game, and it is inevitable that these difficult entry requirements will put many people off. That said, it is a moment when World of Warcraft begins to transform from a messy experiment into a pop culture phenomenon that engages over 100 million people with features and ideas that will shape not only the future of WoW, but the genre as a whole.

Players who had been grinding away for years in Azeroth were thrust through a dark portal and into a landscape that was, for the time, ridiculously impressive. For the most part, Burning Crusade Classic stays true to that era, but Blizzard has made further changes based on community feedback. But the big surprise, aside from the overpopulation of the Quest Zone (to be expected during launch week), is that so far my foray into the Outlands has been shockingly smooth: unlike the launch of WoW Classic, when most people sat in queues for hours, I've had uninterrupted I'm playing without interruption.

It's fun to go back to this older version of Warcraft and discover the many aspects that have remained enjoyable through the ages and lament those that haven't. The sight of giant Fel Reavers stomping through the blood-stained fields of the Hellfire Peninsula, murdering players who get too close, is still cool as hell. But waiting five minutes for a particular monster to respawn because someone killed it seconds before you got there?

Outlands was the first time Blizzard's imagination really ran wild in Warcraft, and the result is an epic mix of fantasy and science fiction. In Zangarmarsh, giant steampunk drainage pumps whirr amidst giant blue mushrooms, and in Nagrand, a huge moon hangs over idyllic hillsides. Reminiscent of The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, the charming and alien landscape has not been spoiled by time.

Stopping to smell the neon blue flowers of the Outlands is a natural consequence of how slow Burning Crusade Classic moves. Reaching the new level cap of 70 will take most level 60 players about the same amount of time it took to reach level 60 (about 50 hours or so). Often, it's easy to get demotivated after completing a quest and seeing the experience bar advance a pixel or two. This leisurely pace will shatter the resolve of those accustomed to more modern MMOs, where leveling is like free bread to be snacked on before a meal.

Those who can adapt to this old-fashioned approach to MMOs will find much to enjoy, for only when you are in a village surrounded by NPC guards are you truly safe. The number of monsters is very small and manageable, but it is easy to accidentally incur the wrath of too many monsters and have to flee for your life. This means that you have to be on your guard at all times and become more connected to the world around you. This is a big difference from modern WoW, where quests feel so effortless and downright pointless; in Burning Crusade Classic, you feel like you are a small part of a much larger and hostile world.

Burning Crusade Classic takes nothing for granted, and even small accomplishments feel monumental. There's a reason why nearby players stop and congratulate me when I level up, or why the party chats excitedly when equipment drops in a dungeon if it's a big upgrade for one player.

This is not a game to be played, but an ordeal to be overcome, one that brings players together through adversity and pain. The sight of children born to the "Dark Souls" generation telling each other to "hang in there" seems endearing in comparison. Try enduring another five minutes back to the corpse because you got scared of the tanks in the "underbog" fen raise and went straight to the other two monster groups for the fifth time. Zugzug, bitch.

This take-it-or-leave-it challenge makes many modern MMOs seem so meager and insistent in comparison. Daily login bonuses, time-limited progression, unreasonable leveling, and a thousand other little hooks claw desperately to get my attention, but Burning Crusade Classic has it backwards: your place in Outlands is patience or skill, or friends you have to earn it with. No wonder millions of gamers were hooked. The confidence that "Burning Crusade" itself is a journey worth enduring is bold.

But while Burning Crusade Classic's torment is brutal, it has many improvements that make it easier to play than WoW Classic. Quests still rely heavily on repeatedly killing every creature in the Outlands, but there are narrative beats woven into the story that help tell the story of the individual zones. Quest hubs are more organized and less haphazard. Also, the endgame in the WoW Classic was inconsistent, but has been refined in Burning Crusade to be more digestible and structured. Gone are the 40-man raids of the Classic, and in their place are 10-man raids like Karazhan or, at best, 25-man raids like Black Temple.

If you've ever lamented the endgame of modern WoW, play a little Burning Crusade Classic. You will be stunned by its enormity. Once players reach level 70, there are 15 dungeons, each with its own version of Heroic difficulty, that must be unlocked by grinding their reputations with a particular faction. Aspiring raiders, on the other hand, will have to complete a vast line of quests called "attunements" before setting foot in that raid. There is a lot of work to be done, like saving up enough gold to buy flying mounts, but back when the first big patch for Burning Crusade was released and more stuff was added, few players could handle it. Now a new patch for WoW is like Blizzard throwing bread to the hungry.

The downside is that Burning Crusade is an expansion designed specifically for WoW's most hardcore players, with little to no support for more casual players. Outside of running dungeons and raids, most players will be chipping away at monsters and repeatable quests in order to slowly build up their faction's reputation, which is necessary to unlock the next step in attunement. However, anyone serious about playing Burning Crusade Classic must accept the fact that at least several hundred hours will be spent completing repetitive quests and defeating the same monsters over and over again. God help you if you decide to play another class and have to start the whole journey from level 1.

Grinding is now a dirty word in the game, but in Burning Crusade Classic it was a badge of honor. If I ever felt frustrated or bored or wanted to quit the game, my patience would reset every time I had a cool encounter with another player. It's not often that I play an MMO where complete strangers are routinely on my friends list. On two occasions so far, I have sat with another player while waiting for a quest destination to respawn, been drawn into a conversation, and ended up spending several hours together. These moments feel as special as they did more than a decade ago.

World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Classic is even more badass and uncompromising than WoW Classic. Most people could pass on this game and enjoy the extra time for other games, friends, family, or hobbies. But for WoW Classic's large and dedicated community, this means that World of Warcraft has begun its transformation into a world-conquering MMO.