Big day today for all them 8 million World of Warcraft addicts: the first expansion “The Burning Crusade” has been released and is live today. I, of course, won’t get to play it being out of the country and not having an available PC to fester in front of. In fact, I only even ordered my copy today despite knowing about it for months. Still, I was able to nick this screenshot of the Dark Portal from somewhere (if it was you, let me know and I’ll credit it because I’ve forgotten)

It’s mighty purdy looking. Of course, everyone will be rushing to make a character with one of the new races, the Alliances Draenei or the Hordes Blood Elves. As one person on the forums has already pointed out, the Horde side will be flooded with female Blood Elf characters and who can blame them? Apart from allegedly sounding like some sultry Surrey seductress, they are well up there with the Lara Crofts of this world when it comes to fanciable digital characters. Pretty sure I’ll end up breaking a habit of ages and make a female character for a change too (and before QE - an habitual virtual crossdresser himself - rushes to point out, yes I did once have a female character, an undead warlock called Mortysa, but that’s been the only one. Ever. MMORPG might well mean Most Men Online Role Play Girls, but I’m not one of them.)