image courtesy of Kotaku

Blizzard announced at E3 (The Electronic Entertainment Expo) that indeed the rumors were correct and the Draenei were going to be the new Alliance faction race, to be added in the upcoming expansion pack for World of Warcraft, called The Burning Crusade. They’d added a few twists to Warcraft lore in order to make the new race work, and they most definitely will not look like the sad, surly looking Draenei shown in the previous post about the matter.

The news overall is upbeat from Blizzard, with a correction on my part; the level cap will be raised to 70, not 75 as I previously mentioned, and there’s even a promo video to go with the story. But here’s the kicker. What gaming news organization might you have thought would have broken the news? Kotaku? IGN? 1-Up.com? Nope, it was, of all organizations, the New York Times.

The article is very well written and interestingly aimed at people who have either played the game or not; and does do a good job to build up excitement for the expansion pack. No concrete announcements on when the expansion will be released, but folks at E3 this week will have the opportunity to playtest parts of the expansion pack and the two new races as they are now. There’ll be many more updates in the coming days, and some of the new info is already up at the Burning Crusade community site. Check out the New York Times article for the scoop, then head over to the community site for more information. There’s also a link to the trailer shown at E3 over at FileShack.

[ New York Times :: Online Game Galaxy Gets a New Race of Characters ]

[ World of Warcraft :: The Burning Crusade ]

[ FIleshack :: World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade – E3 2006 Trailer ]