For those of you who've been vacationing on the far side of the moon for the past year or so, Blizzard has had a World of Warcraft expansion pack in the works for some time now. We unveiled the Blood Elf race on the Horde side back in October, but Blizzard has been mum on the Alliance's addition, up until now. Rumors persisted regarding pandas, murlocs, and demons, but they managed to keep a tight lid on the Draenei. Now, before you go jump off a cliff, these are not the Lost One variety you see shuffling around the Blasted Lands; they are in fact completely different in appearance and demeanor. In fact, so noble are the Draenei (rhymes with "man eye," or at least Jeffrey Kaplan, the lead designer, AKA Tigole, pronounces it that way) that they can be Paladins; in their quest to find a good home, they encountered Naaru, who blessed the Draenei with holy power.

It's day one of E3, and although we tried to hide it from our bosses, many of us here at GameSpy made a beeline for Blizzard's booth as soon as we could. The ability of The Burning Crusade, the first retail expansion for World of Warcraft, to draw us against our will is not to be underestimated. What we saw confirmed the new Alliance race, and shed some light on WoW's immediate and distant future.

LOS ANGELES--Electronic Entertainment Expo 2006 is underway, and so is Blizzard Entertainment's presence on the show floor. The studio is showing off The Burning Crusade, the upcoming expansion pack to the wildly popular massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft. As the studio revealed previously, the expansion will offer two new playable races; the fanatical blood elves for the Horde faction and the recently revealed Draenei faction for the alliance. The Draenei previously appeared in World of Warcraft as the twisted, hunched monsters in the Swamp of Sorrows area, though according to producer Jeff Kaplan, these monsters were corrupted by the demonic horde known as the Burning Legion (the same demonic influence that turned the noble savages known as the orcs into the savage brutes they had become in the earlier Warcraft games). The creatures are descendants of the race known as the Eredar--to which the pivotal character Archimonde belonged before he, too, was corrupted in Warcraft III. The playable Draenei characters are tall, statuesque humanoids, with hooves for feet; tiny horns on their heads; and pale, shimmering skin. Apparently, the new race will be able to join five different character classes: warriors, hunters, paladins, mages, and priests.