World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Previews

Another pair of closed beta previews for Blizzard's World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade expansion pack are now available. The first is at IGN PC:
The Blood Elves are a pretty powerful race. They have some amazing skills including Arcane Affinity which is +10 to Enchanting skill, Arcane Resistence which is +5 resistance to all magics, and two very useful skills. Mana Tap allows players to steal 58 mana, is rechargeable in 30 seconds, and charges players with Arcane Energy for 10 minutes. It's also stackable up to three. Arcane Torrent silences all enemies in an 8 yard radius for two seconds and gains 27 mana for each stacked Mana Tap. Those are some pretty cool racial traits. Because it's beta, we're likely to see all of these abilities adjusted before the game is actually released, but for the moment, Blood Elves, especially magic users, are doing pretty well. Either way, this race is likely to be very popular for their abilities and very sexily feminine character models (which sadly also applies to the males), which up until now haven't been available to the horde (except for those with unusual fetishes).

And the second is at ActionTrip:
The Outlands are a massive place. Took me forever to get anywhere with my Ghost Wolf form (I lost my epic mount, don't ask how). My general impression of the stuff that I've seen thus far is that both the landscape and the creatures are vastly more outlandish and alien-looking than in the "old" World of Warcraft. While everything looked pretty spectacular to me, I was constantly under the impression that the area was invaded by a bunch of drunken Korean graffiti artists. There is something distinctly far eastern about the art design.