Once upon a time I said I will not play WoW anymore. It turns out I lied. I’m back in the game once again – though not entirely of my volition. My brother decided to give in and try the game because his friends were trying to lure him into it for several years now. He really liked it, and after about a week I realized that all we talk about now is WoW. Not only that, but he actually knows more about it now than I have learned during my short stint few years back. Also, he was having so much more fun in the game than I have ever did. So after agonizing about it for about a week, I said “what the hell” and reactivated my old account and rolled a Tauren hunter on Feathermoon. And so far, it has been fun.
I’m still not all that into the regular questing aspect of the game but I have realized that there are several aspects of the game that I totally missed the first time around.
For one, I’m totally having a blast doing the random dungeons. You basically queue yourself up and after few minutes get dropped into a random dungeon with 4 other strangers. When you queue up, you actually get to specify your role in the group (tank, healer, dps, etc..) so everyone knows what they are supposed to do right off the bat. It removes the hassle of assembling a team, traveling to a specific location, starting the instance only to find out that your tank has to quit because his mom just called him for dinner. If that happens in the queued game you can just have the Dungeon Finder tool assign another player from the queue to your team and keep on going.
It is loads of fun so far, and I have been leveling up like crazy since all you fight in these things are elite mobs that are worth mad xp. I have also started doing battlegrounds trying that PVP thing people have been raving about. It is a very different experience from PvE and I actually had to adopt very different strategy as a hunter. Usually you just hold back, send your pet in as a meat shield and spray your enemies with gunfire. In PvP the pet is usually useless as a distraction so you have to team up with a melee player or act as a sniper picking off weakened players that are trying to run away from combat to heal up.
Plus I get to play with my brother who keeps supporting me financially by sending me gold and neatherweave bags and who has decided to create a guild for the two of us and some of his friends so that we can dump all kinds of useful shit in the guild bank.
But none of this has anything to do with the subject of my post. It was just an introduction necessary to set up what I really wanted to talk about. My brother and me came to a conclusion that in WoW, Alliance are the bad guys. I touched upon this in my earlier WoW posts, but the fact he has also noticed this, made me think it is not just me.
When my brother was doing his WoW trial, he actually created a Night Elf on some random server. He didn’t really want to give his friends to much hope in case he ended up hating the game. He took that character up to level 30 before he switched over to the Horde side and started playing on the same server as the people he knew. This allowed him to experience quite a bit of the game from the Alliance perspective.
He mentioned that the tone in which the quest givers talk about the opposing faction is strikingly different. Alliance seems to be all about defeating Horde, treating it as a blight upon their lands. Horde NPC’s on the other hand seem to be in a much more defensive mode. Their missions are about defending their land from encroaching raiders, protecting their families and etc…
If you watch the trailers for Cataclysm the bits about the two new races are similarly very different. The Goblins were “taken in” by the Horde because they had to abandon their home lands and found themselves surrounded by humans who chose to ignore the fact that they were a neutral faction and decided they didn’t want them around. On the other hand Worgen were “adopted” by alliance because of their combat prowess and ferocity. Goblins are disenfranchised tribe that needed a new home and was graciously offered a place among the peace loving races of the Horde. Worgen were ferocious race of beast-men who were drafted into Alliance armies to be a new weapon against the Horde.
Alliance seem like total jerks…
This of course is mirrored by Alliance players – many of whom tend to lack in the maturity department. There is always some asshat camping in Crossroads killing the Wind Rider so that people can’t fly out when they want to. Also when you meet an alliance player in Booty Bay or Rachet they will immediately flip you off and then challenge you to a duel. At least that was my recent experience so far. I spent some time observing the Horde/Alliance interaction in the neutral areas and I noticed that 90% of the time PvP is initiated by the Alliance side. I’m on an RP server which means you must be flagged for PvP which meant that to get what they wanted Alliance players had to follow around Horde folks around the town making rude emotes. If that failed, they would promptly make a bee line for the Wind Rider in crossroads.
Now, I know there are mature players who prefer Alliance. It is just funny how most WoW players I have been interacting with lately have the same view of Alliance as a whole: “jerks, bullies and assholes”. This includes both the NPC factions as well as players. Every time we have a quest that involves Alliance we end up saying something among the lines of “Sigh… God damned Alliance. Why do they have to be such dicks all the time.”
If you remember my previous WoW posts, you know that this is exactly what I loved about the game back then. The fact you can play an Orc or a Troll and not be the bad guy. That you can be a monstrous minotaur like creature and fight the asshole dwarfs and gnomes that are building crappy mines on your land and polluting your shit. You don’t really see anything like this in video games out there.
Anyways, have you been playing WoW recently? What server are you on? I’m a level 32 Hunter and I picked skinning/leatherworking as my professions – any suggestions for cool places to go and interesting things to do?
Btw, in case you were wondering – I’m not planning to post much WoW content on the blog right now. In fact, I have two non-WoW games in my review queue. So I will keep the WoW content down to a minimum for those of you who have quit the game, or never had any interest in it.
I’m kind of like an on-and-off WoW player. I would like to restart but free time is a luxury I don’t have much now. :-/
My brother’s also an avid WoW player. He’s my in-game sugar daddy too. :D
@ Mart:
Yeah, I know what you mean. As it is, I usually log in for an hour or two in the evenings. I’ll do a dungeon, sell the loot at the auction house, train skills if needed and go to sleep.
Honestly, my character has not left Thunderbluff in about 20 levels. :)
My brother on the other hand is 30 levels above me – and that’s only because he took the time to become Exalted with Origmar. He wanted to have a Wolf mount because he hated the Blood Elf Hawkstriders.
Beware, if you get sucked in WoW you’ll have a hard time getting out, especially if you start playing with people you know AND that are already quite addicted to the game. I know for a fact the reason a lot of my friends keep playing is because they don’t want to disappoint their friends/family by quitting, and not because they enjoy the game so much.
It’s been a while since I closed my WoW account (4 or 5 years), but it seemed to me that the Horde was more sympathetic because they’re essentially the losing side of the war. Not only in the game story, but on most server the Horde population is significantly lower than the Alliance’s. Horde players have to stick together if they want to survive, especially on PvP servers, while the Alliance is pretty safe so it’s everyone for himself. I’m pretty sure the feeling would be reversed if the Horde was winning and the Alliance was threatened more directly.
What it is, is a major plot by the Israeli government for you to understand their position in their fight with Pakistan.
JK but seriously — Pirate of the Burning Sea > Everything
PS: I hate when you do graphical changes to your website… I hit preview like 30 times before realizing that you switched the buttons around. :P
I quit WoW in the trial because of all the assholes. Maybe I should try it again and choose Horde. I’ve been playing a private server with a Troll Shaman, Tauran Druid and an Orc Hunter so I have some idea of what to do up to level 40. I probably won’t though, $15/mo is way too much when they charge you that much for the game and expansions. If I’m paying that much for a game I expect Guild Wars style free play, If I’m paying more than $5 or $10 a month for membership I expect them to give me the bloody game and expansions as part of the monthly fee.
This is an example of poor reasoning that too many aren’t smart enough to figure out. You’re on Horde, you’re obviously not going to be ganked by any of the Horde assholes out there. People then make the assumption that Alliance all the assholes are only on alliance, then they sit around and talk with their Horde friends about it until it becomes “truth.” If you play Alliance long enough, guess what? Suddenly there aren’t any more Alliance assholes, they’re all Horde. It seems like such a basic thing that it blows my mind when people can’t figure this out. I’ve played both factions since release, and it turns out people are assholes, not Horde or Alliance. People are the same everywhere. Always.
@ Aaron:
Shh! Don’t ruin our immersion with all this common sense talk. :P
Your view about there being jerks, bullies and assholes is valid, but ever since faction switching, it’s been on both sides. At least as far as the realm azuremyst goes.
I’ve also played with guilds that have outstanding mature caring people on both sides.
It’s all a matter of perspective, really. For the mature players on any server, faction, or game/ online outlet, there are always going to be the jerks.
But, there’s always going to be people who are decent human beings as well.
Same with real life.
I can see where you get your opions from, but worgen were not
Put into the alli because they were furious warriors. If you played a worgen had and read about there history they went with the alli because
1. They where orignally humans
2. They helped the alli by defending it from the scourge
You also say that horde where more of a defensive faction at this period of time.
The only reason that alli attack the horde is because the horde faction has envadeing northshire Abby through the burning stepps, and redridge. Also the undead don’t even care for their alies but think of them as a tool for there schems. All the forsaken want is for very livening thing to become undead. Now that sounds like they are total jerks. Now goblins destroy the enviroment with there inventions, but so do the gnomes, but all the goblins care about is the money business and wealth.
It’s 2013 and Alliance players are still like this. I only noticed when I started playing some Horde characters and embraced the general kindness of players. I’ve seen players on Horde group up to do similar quest (out of random), let you grab certain items first in a quest (and not race you to kill a boss), and equally witnessed a player quitting and give out his gold to newbies. In dungeons, Horde players are generally more patient and friendly. In Alliance dungeons, if you die, you don’t get a res or you get continually harassed if you don’t go fast enough. That being said, I’m part of a nice, mature guild on Alliance and I have had a fantastic time with them. I have however had several instances of just general malice on Alliance. It’s sad.