Two Sides to a Coin: Part 3 -- On the Brink of Oblivion

The dark times will pass.

--Blood Elf NPC saying

The Naaru have not forgotten us.

--Draenei NPC saying

When a new Blood Elf player quests through Eversong Woods, there are a few themes running through the zone.  The Amani trolls are on the move, the Wretched seek magic –any magic—to feed upon, and there are malfunctions with the existing Sindorei magics.  Oh yeah, and there’s the Scourge.

The Sindorei live with the Dead Scar plowing straight through their homeland, and the Scourge rise up and assault the outskirts of Silvermoon and Fairbreeze Village with regularity.  Such is the life of the Sindorei, struggling with the constant reminder that racial oblivion is only a few Rangers away.

On the flip side, Azuremyst Isle is like watching a World of Warcraft version of Swiss Family Robinson play out.  You have the shipwrecked Draenei, attempting to survive and create makeshift living arrangements.  There are the interactions with the native, mutating wildlife, and there are first contacts with the Furbolg, Night Elves, and Humans (who also have their own ship up for repairs).

Then there are the Blood Elves in Amman Vale, the Naga close to Odesyus’ Landing, and the traitor in the midst of Odesyus’ crew.

The Draenei are clinging to the edge of survival, and all it takes is a little push and they teeter over the edge.

Both races have suffered near extinction as the Burning Crusade opens, yet they have shown remarkable resilience.  The Draenei are in an alien world, putting the pieces back together and forging new friendships.  By contrast, the Sindorei are forsaking their old allegiances (and the Light) that they believe failed them in their hour of need, turning instead to the Thrall-led Horde who at least offered a very lukewarm hand of friendship.* 

Even in Outland itself, both races have the will to keep going.  The Draenei ruins scattering the landscape are testament to what they have lost, yet Shattrath is still alive.  For the Sindorei in the form of the Scryers, they not only have to fight the Legion and Illidan, but their own people in what amounts to a bloody civil war.

***

However, their resilience and bitter experience has also given both races a singular focus on defeating their enemies.

Forget about Velen and Ishanah.  Seriously.  No matter what they say, pay attention to the Draenei out in the field in the BC zones.**  With very rare exceptions, they zero in on the Sindorei, whether they are allied with Illidan, Kael/Burning Legion, or the Scryers.  In Bloodmyst Isle, the elements of the Burning Legion (the Satyr) and the Naga are merely secondary to the Blood Elf incursion; nothing else really matters.  The Draenei in Aldor Rise are constantly spying on the Scryers, expecting this whole “fealty to the Sha’tar” thing to be a Trojan Horse.  And it’s not like the Scryers haven’t noticed that distinct lack of acceptance, either; like the Arcanist Adyria says while you’re given the tour of Shattrath, “I'm a Scryer, I always watch what I say. More enemies than allies in this city, it seems.”

Can I blame the Draenei for being so suspicious?  No, not really.  It’s very hard to accept having to fight alongside your enemy, and the Aldor no More quest chain really hammers that point home.

While the Draenei are watching the Sindorei, the Sindorei/Scryers have their eyes on the Scourge and their former friends in Kael’s forces.  Circumstances won’t allow them to forget –not with Undead showing up at their doorstep every five minutes or so—and they have no inclination to do so anyway.  The focus of the entire Ghostlands quest chain, to kill the Scourged traitor Dar’Khan Drathir, serves as a reminder for a new player as to what the Sindorei had to go through.  (Well, as if the Eastern Plaguelands being effectively impassible was enough of one already, that is.  In a post-Cata Eastern-Plaguelands-is-no-longer-L60 world, it’s still way too dangerous to make a run for it.  Believe me, I tried.)  If you didn’t know any better, you’d think that the Blood Elf starting zones were designed for Wrath of the Lich King rather than for Burning Crusade.

Once a player gets to Outland and Shattrath, however, that focus turns almost completely on Kael’s forces.  Just like how the worst fights you get in are with siblings, the Scryers are locked in a do-or-die fight with the one group that knows them best:  their own kin.  The Scryers who set up shop in the Sanctum of the Stars next to the Kael led forces at the Path of Conquest did so by design.  Who better to watch and disrupt the plans of the Eclipsion forces than those who fought alongside them?  Just like in Netherstorm, who better to infiltrate the Sunfury forces there than their brethren?***

The specifics are different, but the results are the same.  You don’t see the Draenei or the Sindorei talking much about the Orcs (or Fel Orcs, for that matter) in Outland.  They both live in the present, against their very real enemies.  Ironically enough, such a focus and a “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” helped with the creation of the Shattered Sun Offensive on Quel’Danas far more than any platitudes could have done.

*Yes, I’m well aware that the Sindorei abandoned the Alliance in favor of isolationism at the end of the Second War, but this is about their personal perceptions.  And besides, during the Third War, Garithos pretty much poisoned any residual feelings between the vast majority of Sindorei and the Alliance.  Never underestimate the power of prejudice.

**Quel’Danas excepted.

***There are some Scryer/Horde only quests in Netherstorm in which you infiltrate the mana forges to eavesdrop on the Sunfury leaders inside.  On the Alliance side, this is replaced by the Aldor No More quest chain.

Two Sides to a Coin: Part 2 -- The Corruption Story

“Ray, when someone asks you if you are a god, you say YES!” 

--Winston Zeddemore, Ghostbusters

The racial origins of the Draenei and Sindorei are well known, but one aspect of their history bears repeating:  were it not for the Burning Legion, neither would exist in their current form.

Certainly the Legion had a hand in shaping all of the Azerothian races, but their influence is most directly felt on the Elves and Eredar.  Were it not for the Legion, the Draenei would still be Eredar.  Maybe they wouldn’t be on Argus, as Sargeras doesn’t really like people saying ‘no’ to him, but the division would never have happened.  Likewise, the Elves might not be so dominant in Azeroth as they were during the rein of Azshara –the Old Gods would have seen to that—but there would be no Queldorei were it not for the Legion and the War of the Ancients.

The temptation and corruption of an individual/race/nation is a standard tale in SFF circles, and it is used repeatedly in WoW to great effect.  You could argue that with the frequency of its use, the corruption tale is a sort of Murphy’s Law in Azeroth:  anything that can be corrupted, will be corrupted.  The Eredar were corrupted, and those who refused the Gift of Sargeras fled, renaming themselves Draenei.  On Draenor, some Draenei were corrupted by the exposure to fel energies, becoming the Broken and Lost Ones.  The Elves were also corrupted multiple times –first most of the Highborne, then the Sindorei—and each time only a fraction of the race resisted corruption.*

Now, I kind of glossed over the division between the Queldorei and the Sindorei, since that division had less to do with the direct hand of the Legion and more with so-called ‘normal’ forms of division:  racism, addiction, and political disagreements.  Some of the Queldorei were holdovers from the disagreements on High Elven isolationism after the Second War, others refused to debase themselves by allying with Illidan and harnessing fel energies, while still others were not directly exposed to Garithos’ racism.

That split aside, the Burning Legion had a direct hand in forming the two BC races as they are seen today.  The main difference between the two races is that the Draenei’s corruption happened in the distant past, while the Sindorei’s corruption is revealed over the course of the Outland questlines.

A Draenei player has a big leg up on a Blood Elf player in this discovery process because Kael’s Blood Elves are their primary focus in the starting zones.  Blood Elf players don’t even know Draenei exist until they reach the Dark Portal and see one for the first time.**  A Sindorei player, remember, has a starting zone that says “we need to get out of here” and “AAAH!! The Scourge!!”  Outland is presented to a Blood Elf player as a Shangri-la, while a Draenei player knows that things are not well in the state of Denmark.

Once a player gets to Hellfire Peninsula, the discussions of the NPCs at Falcon Watch and the Temple of Telhamat prove to be very telling.  The Sindorei are already grumbling about how Outland was supposed to be a nicer place than it’s turned out to be, while the Draenei are trying to reconnect with the Broken and warning people to avoid Falcon Watch.  There’s disillusionment and caution, yet without focus.***  In Hellfire or Zangarmarsh, you don’t see non-allied Blood Elf NPCs as the enemy –even from the Horde side—until the conclusion of the Raging Colossi quests and you discover that Kael’Thas was behind the giant crystal shard.

It’s only when a player reaches Shattrath and is presented with the story of the Scryers that the corruption tale takes off, but the way the story is presented one could easily interpret Vorenthal’s vision as referring to the Sindorei’s association with Illidan rather than the Burning Legion.  The quest lines through Terokkar, Nagrand, and almost all of Shadowmoon continue to hide Kael’Thas’ involvement with the Legion, leading a player to believe that the Legion is merely attracted to the Draenei and the Fel Orcs, with Illidan as a nice bonus.

One could make a very successful argument that the Draenei’s suspicion of the Scryers was borne from experience –not necessarily on Draenor itself, but from many years of dealing with potential enemies.  However, given the frequency of how the corruption story plays out, why the Draenei fail to see its effect in the Scryers remains puzzling.  If the Draenei are immortal as they are hinted to be, then you’d think that the older ones at the very least would recognize what is before their eyes.  In a way, this disconnect is implied in the ‘Aldor no More’ quest line in Netherstorm, where the youthful Draenei Kaylaan has become disillusioned and is unable to call upon the Light.

In Netherstorm, the Socrethar’s Seat quest chain culminates the big reveal that Kael is in league with the Legion, and the side quests associated with it flesh out that even some Sindorei who didn’t join with the Scryers are refusing to associate with Kael anymore.  You would think that at this point that the Aldor would be more accepting of the Scryers, but that had to wait for the Quel’Danas/Sunwell expansion.

Nevertheless, a corruption story is a corruption story, and although it is cloaked in the complexities of allegiances to both Illidan and (for the Sindorei from Quel’Thalas) the Horde, the fall of the Sindorei remains a high point in the Burning Crusade quest lines.  The Quel’Thalas and Scryer Sindorei have discovered the fall of their brethren at the hands of the Burning Legion, just as the Eredar experienced eons ago. 

Did the Sindorei set themselves up for it?  Sure, just as you could argue quite successfully that the Eredar did as well.  Sargeras was no slouch, and the fallen Titan knew exactly what strings to pull to get a race such as the Eredar to ally with him.  Just as with the Sindorei, most of the Eredar willingly agreed to an alliance with the Burning Legion, and from the looks of it, they don’t exactly have buyer’s remorse.

*In the interest of completeness, the Orcs were corrupted multiple times as well, first the division that caused the break by the Mag’har, and the later division by the Frostwolf clan.  However, the Orcs were redeemed at the end of Warcraft III, which is out of the scope of this analysis.

**Unless they run into an Alliance player while out and about or they invade an Alliance settlement.

*** If anything, the Apothecary in Falcon Watch is the most repulsive character in the zone for the experimentation on a captured Draenei.


EtA:  Corrected a plural issue, and replaced "that" with "than".

Two Sides to a Coin: Part 1 -- Introduction

“I hate the Space Goats.”

“Blood Elves are gay.”

“Draenei are stupid."

“BE women are designed just for oversexed teenagers.”

“Female Draenei are like looking at J-Lo with a tail.”

“Blood Elves aren’t real Horde.”

“I go out of my way to gank the Goats.”

“When I see a BE, I want to punch them.  Pretty Horde my ass.”

Sound familiar?

If you’ve played WoW any stretch of time, you come across a lot of strong feelings about the two Burning Crusade races.  Sure, there’s plenty of love for them out there, but there’s been just as much (if not more) hate.  These two races rarely seem to inspire a ‘meh’ reaction from the WoW crowd.

I’m a bit of an odd man out in that I not only play both races but I actually like both of them.  I recently finished the Loremaster of Outland achievement on Tomakan, and I can now share a belief that’s been growing on me the past year:  the two races have enough in common that they could be considered fraternal twins.

Yes, I know, this is a bit of a departure from a previous post of mine, but that post concerned the low level experiences of both races in the Old World.  That post still remains valid because Blizzard didn’t change things very much for both races in the post-Cata Old World.  As for the entire breadth of Draenei/Sindorei lore present in WoW, consider the following racial history:

• Tempted by outside powers, the majority willingly turn to Darkness.  As a reward, they are granted tremendous power.  Those who refuse flee.
• Finding a safe haven, they rebuild a semblance of their prior life.
• Invaded and decimated by outside forces, what remains clings to life support.
• These outside forces are the focus of their ire to the exclusion of almost all else.
• Convinced of their superiority, the race has a blind spot the size of New Jersey.

Now, which race am I talking about?

Anyone?  Bueller?

Both.

What I intend to do the next few posts is expound upon how similar the two races are, so that maybe they can be seen in a different light.  I’m going to focus upon the in-game lore, because that is the lore that gets the biggest dissemination in WoW.  If you play WoW, you have access to the in-game lore; not everybody is going to read the books/comics or watch the DVDs from the BC Collector’s Edition.

Of course, I’m not finished with Alliance side Loremaster --I might miss a few isolated things in the post-Cata Old World-- but I’m reasonably confident that I’ve got most of the Draenei/Sindorei in-game lore covered.

Hopefully, these posts will help a player gain some insight into these two BC races, and encourage people to explore the in-game lore for both sides and come to their own conclusions.

Paizo to License Pathfinder MMO

Well, this is an entertaining development.

Paizo, the company that created the pencil and paper RPG Pathfinder*, has contracted with Goblinworks to create a sandbox MMO called Pathfinder Online.

Here's the link to the Paizo blog.

I suppose it wasn't too surprising that if World of Darkness and D&D found their way online that the current best selling PnP RPG would eventually get there, but I guess I was thinking that they weren't going to branch out in that direction.  However, there's a long time between here and any supposed release date; just ask World of Darkness.


*Known around RPG circles colloquially as D&D 3.75.

Musings for a Wednes Thursday

Given all of the (rather obvious) Cthulhu influence in the WoW-verse, I'm surprised that HP Lovecraft's estate hasn't been asking for a cut of the dough from WoW.  Well, if the estate went down that route, I guess they'd have to tackle Hentai too, and I'm not so sure I'd really want to see that brought up in a court of law.

***

You never know when a conversation might turn to MMOs.

I was in a meeting the other week when I was talking with a fellow employee.  He's always been the sober, stern type, the sort that if there was an entry for "dour" in the dictionary, his picture would be there.  He never talked about anything --anything-- other than work while I was within earshot, but he took one look at my laptop's screen and exclaimed "Ah ha... World of Warcraft!"

My screen is typically covered in IMs, server console windows, and a few other apps, but the telltale "W" in WarCraft from the background pic was visible at the top.  "You play?" I asked, surprised.

"Oh yeah, but I don't get the chance to play a lot.  I don't think I've ever gotten a character to max level.  You?"

"I've got a few at max level, but playing has been kind of low on my priority list these past few months."

He chuckled.  "Imagine that!"

***

I sometimes wonder about celebrity endorsements.

We're all familiar with the "What's Your Game?" series of WoW commercials, starring people such as Mr. T and William Shatner.  However, I hadn't realized just how long ago those ads were until I saw a commercial starring (among others) NBA player Derrick Rose for the new Assassin's Creed PS3 game. 

Do celebrity endorsements in the computer gaming world actually work?  To me, it seems more to highlight how mainstream computer gaming is than anything else, but maybe some people do pay attention to what games their favorite celebrities are playing.

The Invisible Wall

It's been a while.

When I logged on the other day, I found not only some Halloween quests in my queue, but some Brewmaster stuff as well.  I hadn't played for an appreciable stretch of time in well over a month, and I still haven't logged into my Horde toons since, oh, early October.  This isn't due to any real lack of desire to play, but merely my credo of keeping my priorities straight.

My overall absence from the game is due to a combination of factors, but the primary ones can be summed up in two words:  family and work.  It was kind of a perfect storm, really, where work amped up right at the same time that the family got really busy, and I'd end up hitting the hay later and later at night.  Since I play early in the mornings, less time for sleep on the one end meant I had to make it up somewhere, and my WoW time suffered as a consequence.  About halfway through my disappearance from the servers, I finally admitted defeat and let my sub lapse for a little while.  Hell, if I wasn't on to play, why pay for it?

Well, this past week I finally resubbed and logged back in.

You know how Larisa over at PPI once talked about how she'd gone away (on vacation or something) and then came back to find that she couldn't remember how to play at all?  Well, that is no lie.  The first few battlegrounds I got into I swear I was doing little better than hitting a button --any button-- hoping it would score a hit.  About all I was good for was announcing when there were incs or taking away the enemy's attention on the healer.  If anyone had listened in on that first early morning, they'd have heard a steady stream of "no, TV comes after I get the 3 HP...  Dammit, I hit Exorcism again!  Stop it, you moron, use your CDs!  Now why the f*** did I blow both the trinket and Divine Shield?  He only hit you once!"

Times like this, you kind of wonder why I logged back in in the first place.

(Of course, talking to yourself is one of the first signs of senility, and as the Old Man around the WoW bloggers I frequent since Larisa retired, I'm sure I'm letting myself up for a bunch of retirement jokes.)

To be honest, I did kind of question myself a bit about resubbing.  After the first week or so, I found that I didn't miss it quite so much, and I could quite easily keep up with what was happening on the blogosphere and on the guild website without actually needing to login to the game.  Was it a sign of an addiction that I wanted to resub just because?

Maybe, but then again, maybe not.  Interacting in the blogosphere or on a website (or, yes, on Twitter) isn't the same as in-game interaction; there's a voyeuristic feel to reading about people's exploits or general chatter, and an unspoken but omnipresent barrier involved.  If you're not out there, interacting in-game, you're just a spectator.  Grab some chips and the remote, and you've got an evening in front of the tube watching a reality show.

But really, what is more interesting:  reading about people interacting in-game, or actually being in-game?

Some people (/cough Rades /cough) could write about killing ten fire elementals and turn it into epic prose, but the rest of us aren't so gifted.  We need context, we need grounding, we need the interaction itself to make our words come alive.  You can mention that "I finished my last Firelands dailies!" or "I finally got that Netherwing Drake!" and those who have a common reference can appreciate it.  If you don't have that, they're just so many electrons cluttering up the interwebs.

The irony is that I'm talking about playing in a virtual world when there are likely some people out there saying "Go outside!  Enjoy a physical world for a change!"  Well, yeah.  You've got a point.  And yes, I do go outside and enjoy the wilderness, such as it is in my part of the Midwest.  But this isn't a blog for my outdoors foibles, and it misses the point.

If I wanted to merely read about people playing WoW, that's all fine and good, but the fun of WoW is actually playing the game.  It's a shared experience.  People respond to the game --and the other players-- with the entire wide range of emotions because the game world is a living, breathing thing.  Perhaps WoW has more than it's share of detractors due to it being the 1000 lb gorilla in the MMO world, but if people didn't care, everyone would yawn.  MMOs live and die by the passion they stir in their players, and the players themselves are a large part of that.  When an MMO generates merely indifference, then the barbarians are at the gate.

As for myself, I decided to resub because I missed the interaction with friends and fellow bloggers/guildies online.  Sure, I tend to play when the servers aren't exactly busy (or are filled with insomniacs), but they're busy enough.  And the lunchtime crowd can be plenty fun too.

And naturally, right after I resubbed, I came down sick with a very nasty virus.  As I lay on the couch, dosed up with Robitussin and Ibuprofen, I kept muttering "....don't it just figure?"

FYI...

...I'z busy right now.

Will post soon, but real life has been beating me with a clue stick.