See that guy right there? If you’re Alliance, you know he’s probably been in your way as you’ve tried to raid Undercity. If you’re Horde, then you rely on him and others like him to keep the Undercity safe from invaders and to stand guard.

But over on the World of Warcraft Livejournal Community, lustyevilgnome has noticed something….different about the Undercity. Something….missing.

So, I’ve just been on the PTR…
Has anybody been to the Undercity?

If you enjoy the abominations, go and tell them “goodbye” while you can, because in 3.3 they’re apparently all going to replaced by orcs from the Kor’kron Guard. And they’re all pissed off about the whole Wrathgate thing.

Uh oh! Looks like the Orcs are still pretty peeved about what happened at the Wrathgate, even though it’s clear that Sylvanas had nothing to do with it and barely escaped with her own un-life. But that’s not enough for the new Garrosh-led Orcs – whether or not Garrosh officially takes the reins in 3.3 or in Cataclysm remains to be seen, but it’s clear that the Orcs don’t trust the forsaken one bit right now.

Combine this with the rumor that in the newly rebuilt post-Cataclysm Orgrimmar that Garrosh has kicked out all of the Horde races aside from the Orcs and the Tauren because they are the only two “strong enough” to represent the true might of the horde, and you have some serious faction in-fighting going on in the Horde.

What does it all mean? Are we seeing the breakup of the Horde, no thanks to its soon to be new Warchief? We’ll have to wait and see.

Another find on the forums from WoW.com that’s simply too good not to share: Garrosh is Not Well Liked.

So you’ve all probably heard the rumor that in the events leading to World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, Cairne Bloodhoof is framed for some wrongdoing and is subsequently killed, Thrall becomes the Guardian of Trisfal and has to leave his position as Warchief of the Horde. Stepping in for him? Garrosh Hellscream, the violent, petulent, warmongering orc that follows Thrall everywhere and complains about how everything is the Alliance’s fault.

Garrosh…is no one’s first choice, apparently. He’s certainly not my first choice, but some fine folks on the official forums have put together a list of 50 Warchiefs better than Garrosh, which has subsequently expanded to be almost 200 in game characters, models, or objects that would leave the horde better than Garrosh ever could.

Some of the superstars on the list? Sicky Gazelle. Hogger. Egbert. Lost Barrens Kodo. High-Oracle Soo-Say. The list goes on, in incredible hilarity. Oh, and as shown above, “The Login Dragon” is indeed a candidate.

Click the jump to see the rest of the top 50 list, and head over to the forums to see the entire 200 in all their glory. Do you have any favorite NPCs that would be better leaders of the Horde than Garrosh? Let us know in the comments!

(more…)

I stumbled on this a couple of weeks ago and immediately thought it was hilarious. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a preference in faction really – my first world of warcraft character ever was a Tauren Druid, and my second was a Night Elf Hunter. Granted, I’ve come to play mostly Alliance characters these days, but that’s just because that’s where my friends have been. (If you play horde and know some nice people on a good server, let me know! I’d love to meet you!)

But that being said, there’s no debate that there are simply more Alliance players in the game overall than horde players, and the old stereotype that horde players are a little elitist doesn’t come for no reason. A lot of it’s been diluted since Burning Crusade, but old habits are hard to beat.

Speaking of stereotypes, it looks like there’s some validity to the whole “Alliance players are all kids” one, as proved by the first episode of Alliance v. Horde:

Whew. I’m not that bad thankfully!

one of these things is not like the other...

Now that Blizzard has announced that soon you’ll be able to change your faction, a lot of people are thinking about doing it and even more are talking about how it’ll work. Blizzard has all but said that you’ll have to either keep your class so you’ll only be able to change to a race that has that class, but they haven’t said if they’re doing one-to-one changes or any mage can choose an opposing race that supports mages.

Some guilds are talking about switching faction en masse – either to get better racial bonuses (horde to alliance) or to take advantage of high/low pop servers (a horde guild on a low horde pop server switching to a high horde pop server to find more people to recruit, for example), and other people are talking about switching just to get a chance to play with friends who are on the other side.

What about you? What would it take for you to take one of your characters now and change their faction as opposed to just leveling an alt of the opposing faction or rolling a death knight?

I’ve made another foray back into roleplay, this time on Horde side. I’d started a Blood Elf hunter, played her up to 22 or so and really enjoyed her, so I rolled a Blood Elf priest. Couldn’t handle the extremely awkward wand animation, and the non-synced sound that went with it, so I rolled a troll and ran her up to the belf starting area. When she’s of a comparable level with my hunter, I want to try dual-boxing them and roleplaying them both at the same time. (Might be tough, I admit!) I want to play her as a foster-sister who has no idea why she’s so big-boned, why her feet are too big for boots, let alone glass slippers, why her parents never fixed her teeth when she was little, and why her mean, blonde sister keeps making fun of her.

She’s found no love among the Blood Elves, unfortunately – as you can see by the image of Mr. High-and-Mighty above, who refused to let her repair.
(more…)

This weekend I rolled a Blood Elf hunter, and played her up to level twenty. Blood elf because I haven’t seen any of their quests yet (aside from a peek into the belf starting area at the beginning of TBC, where I was turned off by the bright Candyland feel and never went back), and hunter because there are no rich mains Horde-side to bankroll or boost her. She needed to be good at soloing and grinding, which hunters excel at.

And I totally loved her, despite the broken bow-drawing animation. (Blizz, really! Who on earth authorized that spastic motion as being ready for primetime? Back to the drawing board!) I rolled her on a roleplaying server, and although I may not play her up to 70, I’d like to spend some time rp’ing the cutest, meanest girl ever…if you’re on Moonglade, watch for a skinny belf with big, blonde hair killing kittycats. That’s her. :)

Then again, maybe I’ll go Horde, and make her a main. It’s really tempting. What about you – if you were a diehard Alliance or Horde player, have you ever abdicated to the other side? Or do you have mains on both sides?
(more…)

I recently heard someone (I’ve forgotten who – sorry!) on The Instance mention the Draenei in the context of the other Alliance races – what is their deep, dark secret? Every other Alliance race has a tarnish, from the gnomes’ senseless forays into uncontrollable technology to the elves’ storied flirtations with dark forces. But the Draenei seem to lack a shadow; they come across as big, blue, hammer-wielding teddy bears.

As a kind of answer to that question, I offer two narrative points: that the Draenei don’t need a dark history and that they probably shouldn’t have one.
(more…)

The first real guild I joined Twisting Nether was “The Crimson Watch.” They were a role-playing/endgame guild when I joined with nightly scheduled runs or RP events. By far the most popular event was our guild induction ceremony held every Saturday afternoon on Dreadmist Peak in the Barrens. This is the mountain whose top is covered in black fog and cultists and contains a jewel that lowbie players must shatter.

We would meet in this cave, with the jewel, and dress in our ceremonial crimson robes. Everyone would be walking, not running. Everyone would be in character. Our guild leader, Morghul, would stand atop the plateau in the cave and the officers of the guild would kneel beside and behind him. The entire guild was expected to come to these ceremonies. The screenshot above is one that I took during one of our inductions.

Inductees would be given a speech about our motivations and about the goals of The Crimson Watch. Then they would be called forward one by one and asked to perform three tasks: donate one gold to the guild, prove they had spilled Alliance blood, and then spill their blood before the guild. This was done using the /emote command, of course. If they satisfied these requirements and also spoke once over Ventrillo, then they were given crafted crimson robes and were official guild members.

Every week after the ceremony the officers would dream up new challenges for the recruits. They would have to duel the strongest warrior. They would have to hold themselves underwater until they died. They would have to sneak into Teldrassil and leap from the tallest branch into the sea. They would form a raid and attack Ashenvale. They would be summoned to the starting area for Dwarves and Gnomes and would have to occupy the buildings there. Every week it was different, and every week it was fun.

The role-playing built guild loyalty in a way I haven’t seen elsewhere.

After a long, unfortunate break from our game of choice, I have returned with a new lease on life, or unlife, as it were.

Browsing my previous posts easily shows that my penchant for creating multiple alts that get to about level 10 or so and float aimlessly through the long-forgotten limbo of whatever random server I happened to choose at the time. I see no reason why this character should be any different. I like to be predictable.
(more…)

Last night, I logged on to read this as my Guild Announcement of the Day:
“Help a cool person out. Mootrain has been hacked. We are setting up a fund to get his stuff back.” Mootrain is the the number one PvP’er on my server, and he just made High Warlord last week. Now, he is a naked High Warlord.

When I first started playing WoW, I rolled Alliance. I played a human lock for nine months, though I never reached 60 (I was in grad school at the time, and had to be “responsible). In those nine months, I never knew any of the big players on my server (Windrunner). I was abandoned by guild members when they all switched to full-time raiding. I had made one online friend to quest with, but I had to /ignore him when his flirtations became more earnest. I only knew one person in real life who played, my boyfriend, and it was his account that I was using. I was lost in the vast sea of subscribers.

That all changed when I rolled Horde.

After reaching the level to run Wailing Caverns, I found that people I put on my friends list actually /whispered me when I logged on. I recognized names when running Warsong. I could negotiate better deals on auctions about to expire from folks that I has given healthstones to because I was about to log off. I am aware that this warm fuzzy feeling might have something to do with Thorium Brotherhood being a RP realm, but I really think it’s the Horde factor.

And this Horde factor is causing an wave of outrage on the behalf of the greatest warrior on the realm, and an outpooring of generosity. He’s like NOLA, hacked by Katrina. Stay strong Moo, you will be avenged.