Tuesday Morning Post: Glory to the Alliance edition
by Daniel Whitcomb 
Oct 25th 2011 at 7:00AM
I'm not going to lie. As a die-hard Alliance player, I'm more than a little crestfallen. Jaina Proudmoore means a lot to me, and so does the city she built. But I have found one surefire way to cure these doldrums. To all my Alliance brothers and sisters, I invite you: Watch that video up there, and remember. This is what we Alliance can do. We didn't need the Horde, and we didn't need the Argent Crusade or the Cenarion Circle or any other neutral organizations. Glory to the Alliance.
While you bask in the power of the Alliance, I should also tell you that we have no reported downtime yet for this morning as of this writing. If it comes, though, have no fear. After the break, you'll find a roundup of all the BlizzCon news you may have missed over this crazy weekend, as well as everything else worth knowing about from the past seven days. Read on.
BlizzCon news, panels, and events
- Mist of Pandaria, the upcoming WoW expansion, was announced. Check out the official trailer.
- Check out our liveblog of the Mists of Pandaria preview panel.
- New character models for all PC races are in the works.
- Pandaren, the new race, will be playable by both Horde and Alliance. We also have a summary of their racial abilities.
- There will be a new talent system in Mists of Pandaria, and we have a liveblog of the talent system preview. Check out our gallery of all the new talents as well!
- Pet Battles are a new system for leveling your non-combat pets and pitting them against others in the expansion.
- A few new dungeons were announced this weekend, including heroic Scholomance and Scarlet Monastery. We also have preview videos of the new Pandaria dungeons.
- New PVE Scenarios will allow you to take on challenges in small groups.
- The ranged slot is going away for good in patch 5.0. As a result, casters get main-hand wands, which enchanters get to craft.
- Check out our liveblog of the WoW class, items, and professions Q&A. We also have a liveblog of the Open Q&A Panel.
- Check out our liveblog of the WoW lore Q&A Panel, including an appearance from the Wildhammer Fact Checker.
- The WoW art panel had some cool stuff as well.
- The World of Warcraft annual pass gets you free Diablo 3 and an in-game mount in patch 4.3!
- The opening ceremony had tons of goodies, and we were there.
- Check out the BlizzCon goodie bag.
- Blizzard publishing will bring us new Pandaren stories ahead of the expansion.
- The WoW Insider and Wowhead reader meetup was the place to be Thursday night. Check out our recap of all the action.
- Check out our gallery of the BlizzCon floor. It's almost like walking around yourself.
- Check out our gallery of all the awesome cosplay we saw this weekend.
- Anne Stickney has five reasons you should love Mists of Pandaria.
- Our own Joe Perez took a shot at playing through the Mists of Pandaria Pandaren starting zone.
- Dan O'Halloran offers some thoughts on his adventures playing the new monk class at BlizzCon.
- Megabloks came to BlizzCon with some awesome new Blizzard figures.
- Check our BlizzCon 2011 bingo card. How many boxes did you check off?
- WoW Insider's staff made some BlizzCon predictions. How right do you think we were?
- Our sister site Joystiq scored an interview with Samwise Didier, the father of the Pandarens.
- One of BlizzCon's first aid volunteers has some advice for con-goers.
- We met some pretty cool people at BlizzCon, including some honeymooners and people who came from a long way away. We even tracked down the famous Mr. Robot.
- Check out the patch 4.3 patch note updates for Oct. 18.
- At BlizzCon, we learned that the new guild transfer and name change services will be live within a couple weeks.
- Wowhead's got a Mists of Pandaria talent calculator.
- WoW Archivist checks out patch 2.0.1.
- Blizzard offered an official rundown of the new Hallow's End.
- World of Wardrobe heads to Hyjal for some tier 6 farming.
- Blizzard's offered more commentary on gold selling and the new Guardian Cub.
- Lichborne lays out our death knight BlizzCon wishes. Some of them even came true, more or less.
- The Care and Feeding of Warriors was surprisingly prescient this year.
- Totem Talk offered some pre-BlizzCon restoration thoughts. We also take a look at patch 4.3 elemental changes.
- Scattered Shots offered a hunter wish list for BlizzCon.
- Shifting Perspectives has some post-BlizzCon feral thoughts. We also talk up druid healing and tanking in the upcoming End Time dungeon and take a look at the history of balance,
- Encrypted Text talks about the complexities of rogue DPS.
- Spiritual Guidance answers more of your shadow priest questions.
- Arcane Brilliance doesn't believe in one true spec for mages.
- The Light And How To Swing It guides you through your tanking career. We also brace for some holy paladin nerfs in PVP.
- Blood Pact has a history of warlocks.
- Blood Sport helps you get past some common frustrations of PVP.
- The Overachiever continues The Littlest Pet Shop.
- Addon Spotlight answers some reader mail.
- Don't know the first thing about raiding? WoW Rookie has you covered.
- Gold Capped talks about tradeable Chaos Orbs.
- Ready Check doesn't like legendaries.
- Dan O'Halloran, our outgoing editor-in-chief, offers some final thoughts.
- About the Bloggers talks to our favorite rogue and paladin blogger, Chase Christian.
- Know Your Lore continues to talk up our role in the quests of WoW. We also continue our look at the lore of The Shattering.
- 15 Minutes of Fame interviewed the folks at Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, purveyors of awesome perfumes.
- The Lawbringer answers more of your questions.
Filed under: Realm Status, News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Bigred_ore Oct 25th 2011 7:06AM
Thank you for the Video...
fudge Oct 25th 2011 7:12AM
"You allow them their reprieve, knowing that the might of the Horde has been forever broken"
Yeah, great idea.
Jamie Oct 25th 2011 7:14AM
FFFFFFFUUUUUUUU!!!!!!
Natsumi Oct 25th 2011 1:14PM
STOP DRINKING THE PUNCH!
NetherLands Oct 25th 2011 7:29AM
A bit telling people have to go back over a decade to get some equal faction love from the devs.
Kaldor Oct 25th 2011 7:55AM
For the love of god can we please, PLEASE stop bitching about this.
You people, yes I'm pointing at you NetherLands... need to let go of this overwhelming need to find every excuses to say "OMG Blizz like Horde more...!!!!!!"
GET over it!!! Is it going to keep you from getting to level 90? are you going to have less game play allowed to you because of this? Here is the answer... ready for it... NO!.
People need to remember we are in a WAR, yes for the most part it is fought by people sitting in Stormwind sitting in Queue for a random Dungeon, but we are at WAR.
In a war... people loose, sometimes a lot more then the other people loose.
fudge Oct 25th 2011 8:04AM
Most of the time, people lose. They could be loose, too, but I'm pretty sure they're mostly losing, when they're not winning. The people, I mean.
Kaldor Oct 25th 2011 8:11AM
@ Fudge I cant up vote you enough for correcting my misspell =)
Big thumbs.. little keyboard and forgetting to watch Auto correct FTL.
Thanks for the laugh!
=)
NetherLands Oct 25th 2011 8:41AM
@Kaldor
Somebody didn't get his sippy-cup this morning it seems.
Look, people wouldn't be getting so annoyed with this kind of crap if there was any point to it.
History thaught anything, there isn't any point to it.
We've been hearing about 'now the conflict between Alliance and Horde will take centre-stage!' for at least two expansions in a row, and now MoP will use the same tired plot device, when the end-result will most likely be exactly the same as it has always been: both Factions doing the same boring Dailies to get on the good foot of the same Faction of the given Patch.
''Southshore will make the conflict burn!'' - nope, it just meant Southshore -Tarren Mill battles don't occur anymore.
For real conflict, Factions have to intermingle. Removing the staging point of raids into TB/Og is anything but promoting this, and it is rather telling that the only regular World PvP in Cata is in a zone players weren't 'supposed' to PvP storywise (Firelands) yet the zone they were supposed to do so (Tol Barad) players can't complaint enough about meeting people looking to PvP.
''But not everybody wants to PvP!'' True, but that leads to plot-hammering like eg Theramore: it won't make a flying fig of difference what people do, all that happens is losing an interesting port and quest-hub.
Now, if they made an AQ-gates like event out of it, in the sense that e.g. the Faction that finishes first will control Theramore on that server, it would have some meaning. But that won't be happening.
As for your 'you can level to 90 anyway': that flies both ways, and only illustrates why plot-hammering is such a sham, especially because it tends to end up in REMOVING inter-action with the other Faction.
Transit Oct 25th 2011 8:52AM
@NetherLands
"Somebody didn't get his sippy-cup this morning it seems."
It seems you are the one with the lack of maturity here.
Grow up and run a reality check before you post next time.
Ramses Oct 25th 2011 9:44AM
When I first started, back in burning crusade, I remember my new horde toon thinking 'the game was really skewed towards the alliance.'
When I asked my friends about it, their reply was something to the effect of "it always has been. The developers prefer alliance and so does the majority of the player base. It was the way in vanilla. It still is for the most part."
Scooter Oct 26th 2011 4:12PM
@NetherLands
I think people would be more akin to accepting stuff like this if the content actually evolved within the expansion instead of just flat out appearing there and save for a few local quests have nothing further occur.
If Theramore burns and we see no event, no retaliation, no arcane infused Garrosh stomping goodness then members of the alliance have very right to be flat out pissed.
Murdertime Oct 25th 2011 11:08AM
Yeah. It really is worth mentioning the Horde was really, really underdeveloped for a lot of the game and the Horde experience really did feel like they forgot to finish it. It wasn't a case of More Good Things Were Theoretically Happening For Faction X. It was a case of a lot of this isn't explained on the Horde end of things, the quests tended to be a lot simpler and duller, you have no real connection to these events or it ends really abruptly. Not to mention things like the Badlands run.
I mean, you can complain about the Lore stuff but there really wasn't a great deal of parity there until Cata.
EaterOfBirds Oct 25th 2011 7:33AM
Warcraft 2, what a an absolute beast of a game. The alliance always lose land, but in the early RTS games they always won the war overall in the lore when the horde were little more than the baddies (even though you could roll horde and crush them).
also worth checking out for my Warlock brothers and sisters who think the DK's stole death coil and thats why we shouldnt get Mortal Coil. for one, Mortal Coil is a cooler name so they can have it. but also, the original, more castery death knights had it long before in WC 2. *Nostalgia wave*
Fletcher Oct 25th 2011 7:44AM
This is what we do; we defend civilization against the barbarians, tyrants and monsters who would tear it down. We stand united in the defense of justice and the rule of law against those who worship mere strength and brutality.
We will never falter, and we will never surrender. We may bend but we cannot be broken. We are the Alliance.
Ikatsu Oct 25th 2011 7:56AM
For the Alliance!
ImSteevin Oct 25th 2011 9:03AM
lol horde #1
jinxtastic Oct 25th 2011 9:14AM
Such a shame that your resolve doesn't extend to defending your allies, your petty racism and discriminations leading you to discard them at the exact moment that they find themselves in need. Your sins are not forgotten.
All Glory to the Sin'dorei! All Glory to the Horde!
dodgeballer2005 Oct 25th 2011 9:18AM
We'll Keep Trying!
Murdertime Oct 25th 2011 10:22AM
You know what?
It's been six years.
If you haven't come up with a catchy battle cry by now, you're never going to get one.
Same deal with an Alliance version of Saurfang. You've been through Crowleys and Bolvars and Danaths and That Dude who's in charge of the Seventh Legion and it just gets a bit sad.