The Burning Crusade is mine!

Despite the amount of competitions I entered to get a key for the beta
I was unsuccessful (again; by that I mean I've never been in any
blizzard beta and I always try to get in).
So In the same fashion that I did with Diablo, Diablo II, Warcraft 3,
The Frozen Throne and the original WoW I've gotten my flithy
blizzard-addicted hands on the Burning Crusade beta.
It didn't take terribly long to configure a bogus local server so that
I could log in and sandbox some Draeni/Bloodelf goodness.
I've actually found the experience of configuring the server quite
educational, by the same measure as my Diablo II local realm server a
good insight into the workings of the client/server model used.
Seeing how database entries are created and modified really helps to
relate to the server-induced lag often seen on official blizzard
servers.
But all geeky prattle aside I have to say I'm mighly impressed by the
expansion itself, The areas for the two new races are wonderful to
behold.
Keep an eye out in the blood elf starting zone for the mop floating
around mopping the floor on it's own, my girlfriend being an avid
disney fan was quick to point out the referance.
The blood elf females have particularly nice hair-dos but are definitly
lacking in the face department, that is to say from the dozen odd faces
available the differences are hardly noticable - I would have liked to
have seen more lip colors or face markings.
The draeni females are amazingly good looking, having a tonne of
different horns and hair cuts to choose from all looking very funky
indeed.
I can't say I'm a fan of either of the male models however, the male
blood elf is far too buff looking but can't be created as a warrior (I
would love to roll an elf tank) and his facial hair is just a handful
of different goaties (no pimp-style moustache elves here )
The draeni male is rather bulky and top-heavy lending itself toward
melee-class characters so I may use this race/class combo for a
heavy-armored warrior and as interesting as the tentacle-riden heads on
these things is I can't see myself sticking with the race in it's male
form; it's just not pleasing to the eye enough for me.
The animations on the new models is also quite well done, the draeni
females sit down in a side-sadle fashion and the inverted knee-running
animations are awesome to watch.
As for the voice acting the blood elves as one would expect are
completly and utterly inserted in themselves, the /silly revolving
around facials and manicures etc.
Another thing I *did not* see coming is that the Draeni have eastern
european/russian sounding accents which is just a little bizzare. There
is also a lot of mention in the voice emotes about the crashing of the
exodar and how they are interdimensional travellers, something I though
blizzard would downplay a little more in the interest of preserving the
more medievil style of fantasy universe WoW is set in.
The initial clothing of newly-created toons Is also quite different
from the original 8 races, the shaman wearing green shirt/shorts combo
and the warriors clearly wearing what looks like an aqua/silver mail
outfit, all of which are much nicer than the standard WoW newb-gear.
I can't really think what else to mention that you won't see in the 2.0
patch in the next few weeks but I'll finish by saying I'm defintly
looking forward to January - I already have my toons designed and
placeholders set for the names so I'll be in and questing within 2 mins
of the install finishing