Different Strokes

It should be pretty obvious by now that I’m a confirmed Alliance care bear.  It’s not that I have anything against the Horde per se, I just never had any reason to persevere with a Horde character.  Everyone I know plays Alliance on Hellscream EU because I play Alliance on Hellscream-EU.  I never managed to level a Horde toon past level 14 because I got bored not talking to anyone, that’s just the way I roll.  I happen to love Tauren with their goofy, amiable plodding and big feet, and Trolls are beyond cool, I just never had the incentive to play any of them longer than a day or two.

So luckily for me, the Single Abstract Noun bloggers’ guild on Argent Dawn EU gave me just the excuse I was looking for.  I now have three Horde toons, Jessicani a fruit elf Retribution Paladin, Shasti, a fruit elf Holy Priest and Threeleaf, a cow Druid, all plodding around in their mid 20s.  So here, in no particular order, is stuff I’ve noticed.

1. Tauren on My Little Ponies Celestial Steeds just look wrong.  Yes, Ghostcrawler sold me a pony.  No, Threeleaf doesn’t use it, he rides his Kodo like any self-respecting (and very handsome!) young cow should.

2.  There are fewer douchebags.  I accept that that may have nothing to do with the Horde/Alliance difference and everything to do with the PVE/RP server difference, but all the same, it’s nice to have a relatively civilised trade and general chat channel.  Don’t misunderstand me, there are douchebags, but it’s more a case of one guy being a douche, rather that what I’m used to on Hellscream where trade chat resembles the finals of the Who’s The Biggest Douchebag in the World contest.  There’s also a higher class of douchebag.  The douche on Argent Dawn can usually spell correctly and employs urbanity and wit to mock all and sundry.  On Hellscream he uses Dirge, Anal, Chuck Norris jokes and “your mom”.

3.  Because of point 2 above, however, I feel I’m missing out on an important part of the whole horde culture.  There is no Barrens Chat here.  No-one wants to know where Mankrik’s wife is.  It’s puzzling, because the morons are definitely here.  I was present at Crossroads the other day while a level 80 alliance mage in the shoddiest “hey I just hit level 80!” gear you ever saw was showing everyone how awesome he was by manfully slaughtering all of the quest npcs, flightmasters and vendors, you know, because he was awesome.  He wasn’t the moron, however.  Oh no, he was just a guy whose parents didn’t show him enough attention when he was a child.  No, the morons were the level 20 horde who thought they were going to kill him.   Because he’s level 80, and the four of you all have 80 levels between you so that makes it an even fight, right guys?  Guys?  Oh, dead again.

By the way, it’s exactly the same at Sentinel Hill in Westfall, in case any long-term Hordies wondered.  You are not special snowflakes where low-level idiocy is concerned.

4.  Thunder Bluff.  Best capital city.  Ever.

5.  Varian Wrynn may be damaged goods, but he can overcome his prejudices and be honourable, as he showed at Icecrown Citadel.  Garrosh Hellscream on the other hand, is always going to be a cockmonger.

6.  That massive split dividing the Barrens in two you saw in all those Cataclysm spoilers?  Yeah that was caused by High Overlord Saurfangs’ third most powerful cleave.

7.  FOR THE HORDE!  LOK’TAR OGAR!

*ahem*

On another note, I’m finding the random dungeon tool to be incredibly useful at lower levels.  It’s entirely possible for me to level Shasti from 1-80 completely as a Holy priest just by doing instances.  The xp is good, she’s getting a level and a bit per instance at the moment, and the gear rewards are way better than quest rewards.  You do of course run into the occasional cretin, like the Warlock who zoned into Shadowfang Keep and then went afk because he was “watching a movie” or the cream of the current crop, the Tauren Cat Druid I did a Stockades with the other day.  This one was pretty special.  The tank goes one way along with everyone else, he runs into a completely different room and starts trying to take down a room full of elites by himself.  I am now faced with a choice, abandon the tank and the rest of the group to fend for themselves or follow the druid wherever he went and attempt to heal him through Stupid.  Easy choice.  After he died, the conversation went a little like this:

Moron: “FFS HEALER!”
Me: “Yeah, totally my fault, I can of course cast heals through solid walls, I just chose not to.”
Moron: “WELL WHY DIDN’T YOU FOLLOW?”
Me: “If you choose to run off without the tank and healer and take on a room by yourself who am I to stop you?”
Moron: “DO YOU WANT TO GET KICKED?”
Me: “Yes, please.”
Moron: “wut?”
Me: “Yes please.  I’d love to see a dps successfully votekick a healer, never seen it happen before.”
Moron: …
Me: “I’m waiting”
Moron: …
Me: “Votekick failed, huh?”
Moron: “PEDO!”

But on the whole, the LFD experience at low levels has been pretty good.  There are impatient tanks who think they’re invincible and dps whose command of the English language is restricted to their “gogogogogo” macro, sure, but by and large it’s been a pretty pleasant experience.  Threeleaf is rapidly becoming my favourite character.  I mean, for starters he’s a Druid and they’re just awesome anyway.  Secondly he’s a big amiable cow with massive plodding hooves who just sort of bimbles around accidentally running into adventures and he scratches his arse a lot.  What’s not to love?

All the same, I think I’m going to have to start an Orc and a troll too, just not sure what.  Orc Hunters will never be the same for me after Flintlocke vs The Horde, Troll Shamans either for that matter.

While we’re on the subject, if you’ve not read Flintlocke I highly recommend you do, especially if you play Horde on a Roleplaying server.  The Horde comic can be found here, and the earlier Alliance version (which started as a weekly column by Dave “Fargo” Kosak on Gamespy) can be found here.  Mad as a box of frogs, both of them.

It Came From The Blog!

Those of you who browse my blog list may be aware that Tamarind and Chastity of Righteous Orbs have started a new bloggers guild on the Argent Dawn server, Horde side.  The guild is <Single Abstract Noun> and pretty much all are welcome, bloggers and blog readers alike.  Finding myself booked into a hotel for the weekend with my trusty laptop and broadband wi-fi, I ventured over to see what all the fuss was about.

I have a couple of low level toons scattered about various servers from experiments playing Horde or just out of something to do when Hellscream was down, so I quickly transferred Shasti and Jessicani from Eonar to Argent Dawn and did a quick /who single to see from whom I could bum an invite.  Luckily for me, Larisa, she of the fabled Pink Pigtails herself, was on and pretty soon I was a proud member of <Single Abstract Noun> along with Redux from Dwarf Deathknight, Kurnak from The *urnaks and many others.  A couple of things became immediately apparent.

Roleplaying servers are wierd.  Oh did I not mention Argent Dawn is an RP server?  Even their economies are wierd.  Stacks of linen cloth go for less than 2g per stack.  Yes really.  I can’t remember low level crafting gear selling for that low a price since…  well, I can’t remember low level crafting gear selling for that low a price!  Also, Silvermoon City isn’t deserted on an RP server.  It’s full of people…  you know..  roleplaying at each other.  If you’re not used to the social conventions (and I’m really really not) it can induce a low level state of panic.   On Friday night I was at the Inn and I pretty desperately needed to get to a trainer.  The only problem was that a bunch of Roleplayers were all standing around the bottom of the stairs saving the world from the taint of infinite evil.  Or something.  What this entailed was talking a lot and emoting moodily and haughtily at each other.  I dunno, it’s RP stuff.  The problem was that I really don’t know the protocol for interrupting an epochal lore-defining moment in someone’s carefully scripted RP session by my rather urgent need for them all to get the fuck out of the way so I could see my trainer.  Do you just barge through with a “Sorry for interrupting, please don’t mind me, carry on saving the world, just pretend I’m not here”?  Do you ignore them?  Do you wait while they finish and hope they’re all fast typers?

I just don’t know.

And it’s this not knowing that can create all sorts of problems.  People walk everywhere on RP servers.  And I don’t mean they don’t use mounts.  I mean they walk.  Not run.  Now this is all well and good but I’m level 10, I don’t have a mount, the Sunspire and the Priest trainer is on the other side of the damn city and have you seen how big Silvermoon is and I’d prefer to get there tonight so I’m not walking there thanks very much.  But is my running about the place like a thing (a very pretty thing, but a thing nonetheless) possessed offending people and I dont realise it?  I don’t know these things!

Another hazard associated with RP servers is that you always run the risk of someone RPing at you completely out of the blue.  It would be great if there was some sort of visible “I’m just not that into you” flag that we could all pop on.  There very well may be, once again, I just don’t know.  But when Edward Connelly of the Undercity walked up and started chatting to me outside the Silvermoon Bank while I was disenchanting some tailored gear I’d made earlier, I had a brief panic attack.  I felt like the shop assistant who’d just been confronted with the very transvestite Eddie Izzard walking into his shop:

Me: Aaargh, RPer talking to me, what do I do?  HALP!
Edward of the Undercity:  “Good evening, my lady.”
Me: No idea what to do, quick brain, suggest something!
My Brain: Sellotape all your gloves together!
Me: Brilliant plan!
Edward of the Undercity: “My lady, why are you sellotaping all your gloves together?”
Me: “What do you want with me?  WHAT?  AARGH!!”

Shortly before that a bunch of us were hanging out in Murder Row (I think it’s called) and an undead Rogue stopped to chat.  We played along as best we could but it was like the school drama club being thrust onto stage with the RSC.  Apparently I committed an unforgivable social faux pas by referring to the Rogue by his name, before he’d introduced himself to me.  I mean, how could I possibly know what his name was if no-one had told me?  Oh yeah, perhaps it’s because it’s floating over his head in letters a foot high?  Oops, RP server.  Different rules.  Damn!  I think I recovered quickly though:

Klim of the Undercity: “How do you know my name?”
Me: “Saw you on the wanted posters.”

In retrospect, probably not the smartest thing to say to a level 80 Rogue.  Yeah, I probably need to do some research.  The onus most definitely rests on me, of course.  No-one’s forcing me to play on an RP server, the least I can do is learn the house rules.

On the other hand, the RPers do some amazing stuff.  One of our guild was questing in the Barrens and ran into a group of them “defending” Northwatch Hold, dressed in proper Imperial Plate Armour and everything.  On the other hand I had a slightly similar issue while doing the Battle for Hillsbrad quests.  Just what exactly are you supposed to do when you chase a quest npc into Hillsbrad town hall and find it stuffed full of level ?? Alliance RPers in full Grand Marshall pvp gear emoting furiously at you?  /cower doesn’t seem to cover it.

Oh, and female fruit elves are inexplicably popular.  Counting just those over level 10, <Single Abstract Noun> has 26 of the flighty little buggers!

It’s fun though.  We ran Ragefire Chasm and Shadowfang Keep with guild groups, mostly well under the level requirements, so low that we couldn’t use the summoning stones and had to, you know…  walk to the dungeon entrances.  Uphill both ways in the snow etc.  Funnily enough, despite Shadowfang Keep in particular being one of the more bastard-hard of the low level instances, not a single guild group failed to clear.  Of course we all have level 80 mains on our “home” servers and as bloggers tend to have an active interest in “how shit works” so it shouldn’t really be surprising.  But several things about playing on a new server as a new faction leap to mind.

First, there’s no safety net.  I can’t twink any of these alts with gold or crafted gear and BoEs or heirloom items because I don’t have any level 80s on this server.  Secondly, these are Horde toons and I never had a Horde toon over level 20 before, so I don’t know where anything is.  Oh sure I know where Hillsbrad is and how to get to Thunder Bluff etc, but I don’t know where anything is in Thunder Bluff, who the quest givers are, even what quests I should be doing.  Getting around Undercity is always going to be confusing.  This isn’t actually a bad thing though.  In many respects it’s like playing my very first toon again, and it’s really quite refreshing.

Miner Hackett is a complete and total bastard though.