Something odd is happening...

Alliance actually won a wintergrasp this week... and in less than 5 minutes to boot! After which, I received my three marks from the battle, and turned them in (along with another 37) and got some fancy new pvp shoulders on my warrior.

The night after that, the Alliance were back to business as usual and I had a spectacular losing streak of battle grounds, but gained enough honor to purchase the wrathful cloak. So hooray for losing matches with the quickness. I did get the chance to get a bit of excitement, though. Tenacity x8 makes blaaaaaaade stoooooorm a LOT of fun. I had 76,000 health, and could drop an enemy player in 4 hits (a LOT less than that if they had no resilience).

I figured I'd try to get one battleground in tonight and WSG was what came up. Holy crap, was I astonished to see 5 other players pretty well outfitted in pvp gear, and not a single heirloom weapon to be seen anywhere! It was pretty much a steamroll in favor of the Alliance.

It's interesting to see the various battlegrounds now from two perspectives. The horde truly does seem intimidating, and the alliance has no flippin clue what they're doing. I cannot tell you the number of times I've seen half the team go straight for the flag in Eye of the Storm, or the entire team sans 1 person at the stables go to the mine in Arathi.

It's an odd feeling to just look at battlegrounds as a way to farm honor, instead of actually playing the game and trying to win. At points, when the team is just SO BAD I don't even feel like trying, because it would be a suicide mission to do so, I have to admit: I've given up and just stayed at a spawn point for a while until the match ends.

Come to think of it, I used to laugh about the crazy suicidal Allinace "I'm a hero - I'll kill you all with one fell swoop of my *gurgle - flop - overly dramatic death animation*" Who knew? They're not suicidal, they were just the only poor bastard on the team who actually was trying. And now it's me!?

I'm wondering if the attitudes of the players has changed a bit with all of the instant gratification we're seeing. "Oh, crap. The horde took three flags. Ok, that just means it'll be over quicker."

Honest to goodness, I have seen Alliance players justify their lack of effort as "the horde has 20 minute queues, and we can get in battlegrounds instantly." Which, coming from the Horde as I did, I know is completely untrue. It totally depends on the server / battlegroup.

And to further the topic, Blizzard is making regional cross battlegrounds, meaning all of North America will the thrust into the pool of players waiting to play matches. Which, should speed up the queue times for the Horde.

So all you Horde players rejoice! You'll be queuing up faster, and winning the same amount as always, because the Alliance just sucks at rational thought and organized fights; they'd much rather follow the safety of the herd and just defend one node.

Yep, we sure got stables here. No foul hordie is gonna take my flag! Yep, horses... Such a shame we can't give them any shoes or any work to do such as hauling ore, or even timber around because we'd rather just let the Horde have the mine, lumberyard and blacksmith. And we can't feed em either; no farm.

With treatment like that, I surprised the horses don't leave. Maybe that's what we're all there for? In fact, I think I'll start organizing an equestrian guard squad in the games from now on. Our battle cry will be "Hold your horses!"

Hypothetical Question Time

The other day when I was putzing around and completing a few quests around Thousand Needles, Murtaugh and I were keeping a running conversation going. (He was over in one of the higher level areas; more than high enough to be instant death for a 31st level Paladin.) Anyway, during the course of the conversation he asked me whether I'd be playing the Horde if he and Missy weren't already playing that faction when they invited me to join. I rather quickly tossed back the reply that I'd probably be playing an Elf of some sort, whether Horde or Alliance, and gave as my reasoning that I've played enough Humans in my past that I'd like to try something different.

After his query fermented in my brain for a while, I thought it deserved a better answer than that.

Of course, the flippant answer would be that I wouldn't be playing WoW at all; I had no real desire to go play an MMO before being invited to do so. The 'why' of that is simple: MMOs are not what I typically play when I play computer games; I'm much more in the mold of the turn based strategy player. Civ is probably my favorite game, but the Total War series is also damn good. The old Master of Orion was great, and it sounds like Galactic Civilizations II is following in the same vein. Sure, I'd played computer RPGs before, but not MMOs.

Now, putting all that aside for a moment, what would I play if I decided to try out WoW on my own? My RPG history suggests a Human Priest or a Human Warrior, but in reality I'd kind of tired on playing Humans. The natural extensions of a D&D player interested in fighting would be Dwarven or Orc Warrior, but I wanted something different. The Elves of both sides are appealing to me, mainly because they're different from Humans but not too different to play well. (Yes, I slip into FTF RPG mode when I consider characters to play; kind of hard to disassociate myself from something I've been playing since 1980 or so.) The thing about Elves is that, well, they're popular. Blame the Lord of the Rings movies, the Cult of Drizzt, all sorts of generic fantasy worlds, or even D&D, but Elves are hot. For a guy who prides himself on marching to the beat of a different drummer, following the pack wasn't exactly what I had in mind.

Two things made me stick to my guns: just because everybody else does it doesn't mean that I shouldn't, and in an MMO you can make your own path. Do your own thing, don't be an ass, and you'll be fine.

Now, the question becomes Horde or Alliance? If I'd have just seen pictures of the races and made decisions that way, I'd probably have chosen Alliance. Come on, I'm programmed just like everybody else to think that the side where Humans, Dwarves, Elves and Gnomes are on is the "good guys" side. When Murtaugh and his wife invited me to join, however, I took the time to read a bit of the history of the races. Blizzard did a great job of making the backstories neutral enough to keep it from being slanted toward one faction. There were enough bad and good deeds all the way around that kept one particular faction from being easily defined as "the good guys". Digging down, you find the stereotypes of the Horde races don't fit; sure, they don't like the Alliance, but that by itself doesn't make them evil. (Okay, the Forsaken don't help themselves much with their tendencies toward eradicating Humans, I'll grant you that, but given the Scarlet Brotherhood you can understand the source of their dislike.) In fact, I find the Native American slant that Blizzard built into the Tauren fascinating. It's perfect in it's own way, taking what would be a stereotypical Minotaur and turning it into something else.

I guess the answer to the faction question isn't simple; I still might have chosen Alliance, but I'm comfortable with the Horde. Except for the Forsaken; even the rest of the Blood Elf NPCs seem to be a bit, um, uncertain about their erstwhile allies, but they play nice for the time being. The Horde seems to be a good fit for me right now, and I'm fine with playing it. While I might try an Alliance character later for comparison, I'm fine with playing Horde at the moment.