World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Collector's Edition

The box that launched a thousand collection shelves. The World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Collector's Edition for PC is one of the most recognizable and coveted collector's editions in gaming history, and for good reason. Inside you'll find "The Art of the Burning Crusade," a massive 208-page art book, an exclusive behind-the-scenes DVD, the Collector's Edition soundtrack, World of Warcraft trading card game starter packs with exclusive cards, an Outland mouse pad, and the crown jewel: an exclusive in-game pet.

Blizzard understood something fundamental about their audience. WoW collectors don't just play the game. They live in it.

That 208-page art book is a beast, covering the visual expansion of a world that millions of players were about to pour through the Dark Portal to explore. The soundtrack captures the eerie, alien beauty of Outland in a format you can hold. The TCG starter packs fed into a physical card game ecosystem that was thriving at the time, and the exclusive cards carry their own secondary market legacy.

Then there's the in-game pet. In an MMO where cosmetic exclusivity is social currency, that pet became a walking status symbol. The Burning Crusade CE set the template that Blizzard would follow for every subsequent expansion, and finding one sealed today is the kind of thing that makes a collector's pulse quicken.

This is the standard by which all MMO collector's editions are measured.