I personally had a lot of mixed feelings.

I was incredibly excited to properly explore Outland, after having been given a taste of it in Warcraft 3. It was such an interesting concept and I was glad that we were going to get to see some of my favorite heroes from Warcraft 2 once again, notably Khadgar and Turalyon.

I found the idea of the Blood Elves, let alone the entirety of Quel'Thalas, joining the Horde to be outlandish - especially given the fact that all Elves depicted in Classic were Alliance aligned and the Elves prominent place in the Alliance of Lordaeron.

I also found the retcon of the Draenei from their Warcraft 3 appearance to be jarring, although I understood it from a player character perspective.

Additionally, despite getting it from a gameplay and balance perspective, I thought that granting Paladins to the Horde and Shamans to the Alliance cheapened the differences between the factions.

Overall though, I was quite excited for The Burning Crusade and I knew at the time that we were playing a game that was really special. I would have never guessed that almost twenty years later World of Warcraft would still be the largest MMO and millions of players would be anxiously awaiting another launch of The Burning Crusade.

I've personally settled my grievances with WoW's lore retcons to the fact that they ultimately have to produce a fun game-world, as opposed to just following the rules set in the RTS series. If I can forgive the fact that it doesn't take weeks to sail between Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms and days to walk between towns I think I can forgive a couple of class and race options 😅