It's been a long two years since Blizzard unleashed World of Warcraft Gold on a gaming world that was apparently primed to receive it. While some massively multiplayer games had done well before WoW Gold hit store shelves in November of 2004, none had achieved anything like the unprecedented success of Warcraft. As one of the biggest smash hits in PC gaming history, whether online or off, World of Warcraft Gold has taken on a life of its own, increasing its worldwide subscriber rolls to eight million players in the last two years.

Unfortunately for those of you who dabbled with WoW Gold and managed to escape the addiction, Blizzard has managed to unleash another four compact discs full of captivating content in the form of The Burning Crusade, the first full expansion for World of Warcraft. The list of new additions in the Burning Crusade is a rollcall of the popular features that you might have expected: new races, new zones to quest in, a new profession, a raised level cap, and so on.

This short primer to the Burning Crusade is intended to introduce you to some of the new features of the game. The amount of new content that's been added to the game, especially in the Outlands, will be more than we can possibly cover in a short space, but if you're looking for some of the new surprises in the expansion, then feel free to read on!

For many players, reaching level 60 is actually the beginning of an all-new game within World of Warcraft. There's epic lewt to be won, bosses to be beaten, and raids to be, uh, raided. This content, however, can be an impenetrable maze of intersecting quests and raid instances. For someone who's just reached 60, simply figuring out where to start can be a daunting task. The chat channels in Ironforge and Orgrimmar are a nonstop flood of abbreviations and acronyms: "UBRS." "Scholo." "Strat." "DM." "LF3M BRD EMP RUN PST!" What does it all mean? What should you be doing first?

That's where this guide comes in. It's not a step-by-step strategy guide; it's simply a roadmap, a "user's manual" to being level 60. On the following pages, you'll find a listing of just about every high-level quest chain in World of Warcraft, overviews of how the major raids work, and other diversions that level 60 players have been known to enjoy.

Whether you've been level 60 for a day or raiding for months, hopefully this guide will take some of the mystery out of WoW's endgame content and help you enjoy life after 60. Happy Raiding!