I don't play Gnomes a lot.
Okay, I don't play them at all in the same way I don't play Forsaken, but at least the overtly evil aspect of the Forsaken* isn't found in Gnomish society. It's just that Gnomes really don't interest me at all in the same way that Kender and Gnomes in the Dragonlance novels/D&D setting didn't interest me. The fact that Gnomes are the metagame option for caster classes (Mage and Warlock) didn't exactly help either.
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| To help an in-game friend create a "Gnome Only" guild, I did create ol' Grumpygus here, whom I actually never play. |
However, for expediency on the Anniversary servers, I created a gnome banker.
My first thoughts on creating one were "Why did I do this?" And it wasn't rhetorical, either, as the likelihood of an L1 Gnome dying while getting to Ironforge was much higher than creating a new Night Elf or Human and running to Darnassus or Stormwind respectively. As it turns out, the timely arrival of an L5 player making the run through the tunnels to Kharanos and on to Ironforge saved my pathetic banker from an ignominious death.
Having arrived at Ironforge, however, I was presented with a pretty standard "banker" experience: go set yourself up to receive items, then go to the bank to deposit them and/or distribute/sell them. No big deal, so I did just that.
A few weeks later, I was taking a screenshot for a guild name I found amusing, and I happened to zoom in on said banker. It was then that I discovered that Gnomes have a very different perspective than other races.
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| Okay, this is kind of uncomfortable. |
This makes Cardwyn feeling like a shrimp compared to Night Elves (and Draenei) look tame by comparison.
When your toon can pretty much run underneath a regular horse, you have an extreme difference in perspective.
I guess some people like this, especially given some of the commentary in the Dwarf/Gnome starting zone, but... Yeah. I'm not doing this one again.
*Okay, in the Old World of pre-Cataclysm World of Warcraft, that sort of evil-ness is primarily limited to members of the Apothecary (and Varimathras), but it's much more in-your-face in the reworked Azeroth from Cataclysm onward.
The low-level perspective is very different but I find it far easier to cope with than the high-up viewpoint of the large races. Similarly, while tanking as a shorty means seeing nothing much above the feet of most monsters, that's a small price to pay for not getting stuck in tunnels or having to spend half your time crouching, as was the case in several games I played back in the days when developers didn't make every dungeon look like a cathedral.
ReplyDeleteI guess I don't play games that require you to crouch much, so I never considered that angle. I just could never consider playing a Kender, so anything that hits those same notes is a firm "no" from me. The viewing angle was just the cherry on the top.
DeleteMy son enjoyed playing Gnomes because their culture was just so goofy compared to the other races. Their sensibility just tickled him. He did play other races, but always seemed to come back to the short and/or humorous ones.
ReplyDeleteI've tried the short races, but the viewpoint and the various appearances just don't do it for me. I'm tall in real life so tall races in game just fit better for me.
Like I mentioned to Bhagpuss, I guess I can't handle races/societies that are Kender-like in design. Maybe it's because I've become too familiar with Darwin Award-esque behavior (and maybe I've done a bit of that myself as a kid), but I can't jump on board playing a character that pretty much throws caution to the wind like they do.
DeleteYeah, gnomes are the one Alliance race I avoid too. Never could stand the quick tip-tapping right along the floor combined with the strange viewpoint. It just bugged me.
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