Burning Crusade content start showing up in the main game

If you’ve popped open your in-game world maps lately, you probably would be amused to see The Burning Crusade‘s Outland printed in there right now. Now if you could only get there… except that you’ve got to wait for Blizzard to make the expansion available this coming January, right?

True enough, but it doesn’t mean that Blizzard can’t start preparing for the expansion right now. As WoW Insider noticed with a bemused smile, various Burning Crusade stuff have mushroomed like… well, mushrooms all over Azeroth. And the map is just the beginning: notice anything new in the screenshot of the character creation screen?

Vendors are now offering jewelcrafting recipes and techniques… except that (as of now) there’s no one with the skills to craft jewels. Shaman and Paladin trainers have appeared in some of the major cities, as have Draenei and Blood Elf characters. Dungeons can now be flipped to “epic mode” (BC-exclusive feature), except that it doesn’t work on the dungeons in the current game.

And perhaps out favorite anecdote from WoW Insider, attributed to the WoW_ladies LiveJournal group, Darkshore’s now running a “ferry to nowhere.” At least until you install the expansion. Even more surprising, according to the linked LJ post, is when you get in the ferry, you set off for nowhere… and you find yourself in the Darkshore graveyard. So what happened? The ferry sank?

If you’ve popped open your in-game world maps lately, you probably would be amused to see The Burning Crusade‘s Outland printed in there right now. Now if you could only get there… except that you’ve got to wait for Blizzard to make the expansion available this coming January, right?

True enough, but it doesn’t mean that Blizzard can’t start preparing for the expansion right now. As WoW Insider noticed with a bemused smile, various Burning Crusade stuff have mushroomed like… well, mushrooms all over Azeroth. And the map is just the beginning: notice anything new in the screenshot of the character creation screen?

Vendors are now offering jewelcrafting recipes and techniques… except that (as of now) there’s no one with the skills to craft jewels. Shaman and Paladin trainers have appeared in some of the major cities, as have Draenei and Blood Elf characters. Dungeons can now be flipped to “epic mode” (BC-exclusive feature), except that it doesn’t work on the dungeons in the current game.

And perhaps out favorite anecdote from WoW Insider, attributed to the WoW_ladies LiveJournal group, Darkshore’s now running a “ferry to nowhere.” At least until you install the expansion. Even more surprising, according to the linked LJ post, is when you get in the ferry, you set off for nowhere… and you find yourself in the Darkshore graveyard. So what happened? The ferry sank?