Posts with tag factions

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.

Well, what do they say about plans and contact with the enemy? This week, I'd fully intended to write a Cataclysm 101 guide for prot warriors, but then Cataclysm actually happened and I immediately spent the time as fury. Since I'm going to start working on leveling my prot warrior soon as I get the fury to 85 (which I should have done by the time you read this) the protection 101 will be next week. This week, as I've been flitting around trying to decide which factions to grind rep with for which rewards, I've decided to share all that musing with you.

Also I've been kind of running around like a chicken going 'woah' a lot, but you probably didn't need to know that. Yes, I was in the beta. I was in the beta on a four year old computer. Playing the expansion on a new machine has even my jaded warrior heart all aflutter. So far, I've kept my T10 pieces for the 2 set bonuses, which are boring but compelling (the two piece is now just all physical damage increased by 5%, while the four piece is all damage, period) but with Deepholm gear dropping I expect I'll be dumping set fairly soon. I've more or less replaced almost all my non set gear with blues and greens.

So here's a sampling of the factions I'm looking at and the gear and arcanums they offer.

Spoilers for Cataclysm in this post, me hearties.

One of the things I've noticed in my time back-and-forthing between Alliance and Horde toons is that each faction seems to have many, many vocal partisans who believe the opposite faction to be filled to the brim with churls, knaves and scalawags. Perhaps even hooligans and ne'er-do-wells. You see it all the time in general chat: "Those ally fellows are nothing but mountebanks!" Or perhaps: "Horde? Nothing but disreputable scoundrels, bounders and cads!"

What I find interesting is how much of this factional divide is created by the game itself ... how much comes from quest lines and zone design and world events ... and how much is purely based on the players. It's true that over the past several expansions, we've seen a shift in the game itself from the days of the AQ gate event and the opening of the Dark Portal, when Horde and Alliance stood shoulder-to-shoulder against threats to Azeroth, to the present Wrath/Cataclysm direction when even Old Gods, Lich Kings and insane dragon aspects can't get the Horde and Alliance to cooperate.

Still, until fairly recently, I'd never really felt much of the infamous Horde/Alliance hatred from the game itself. Even the Wrathgate /Battle for Undercity and the Broken Front quests didn't come close to matching the intensity of a forum flame war or a really acrimonious Wintergrasp battle. Playing Horde back in the day, you couldn't help but notice the perception of superiority Horde players (including myself, at the time) felt over Alliance. But the story didn't really have much to do with it.

So far, we have reputation rewards for Therazane the Stonemother in Deepholm, the Baradin Watchers and Hellscream's Reach in Tol Barad, the Wildhammers and Dragonmaw Clan in the Twilight Highlands, and the Ramakhen faction of Tol'vir from Uldum. Right now, all rewards are itemized for Alliance in the case of the Hellscream's Watch and Dragonmaw, but new models and names should come in a later build. While these are not necessarily the complete lists for each faction, you get an idea of what will be available.

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Ever since I first looked at my character's skill list (almost six years ago now) and saw there was actually a skill bar for languages, I have had an idea planted in my head. If my character has the technical ability to learn languages in WoW, why couldn't I choose to learn Orcish? This notion led me further to ask, "Why can't I be in a cross-faction guild consisting of both Alliance and Horde races, working together to accomplish great deeds?" When I relayed this idea to my guildies at the time, one guy actually told me it was the stupidest idea he'd ever heard. Really?

There has always been precedent in the game for this kind of cross-faction cooperation. We can see it in groups like the Argent Dawn and the Cenarion Circle. Hell -- even the Twilight's Hammer is more racially progressive than the Horde or Alliance. And don't even get me started on that racist jerk Varian Wrynn. Oh, I know he was mistreated in captivity by orcs, but his mistreatment is nothing compared to what Thrall endured at the hands of humans, and Thrall's first instinct has always been of peaceful resolution rather than conflict (and for reference, I'm an Alliance player, folks).

We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.

• OutDPS loves himself some explosive trap.
• Righteous Defense covers tankadin leveling 51-80.
• GlazerVision Studios has made a nice YouTube video of How To Download World of Warcraft AddOns.
• The Shadow Troll asks Why do I always pick the good guys?
• Find out what's in store for the WoW TCG in 2010.

Gnomeaggedon happened to post something so interesting the other day that I thought it merited a bit more discussion. He actually posted it almost as an afterthought (I guess he's moving in RL -- good luck with that), but it's quite an idea just the same: "Make it all BoA," he says. Blizzard has added in some more Bind-on-Account items, and most recently made it possible for BoA items to go across factions. But Gnomeaggedon says it's time to stop messing around: mounts, emblems, tier and arena gear, currencies, vanity pets, reputation items, anything that would be useful across toons should be able to be traded freely between them. Why, he asks, should there be limits on which character you decide to play with?

And actually, while the possibilities there might make some players' heads spin (imagine how many badges you could earn on your geared-out pally for your newly 80 warlock), I think that Blizzard is probably headed that direction. They may not want to open the floodgates completely, but look at where we've come -- we just heard Frank Pearce say the other day that faction changes are a direct result of Blizzard wanting to give players more choice of who to play with, so wouldn't it follow that we'd eventually get more choice about which characters we use? You have to think that we'll see more and more BoA items, so why not just skip to step ten and open it all up? What do you think?

We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.

• The Pink Pigtail Inn is collecting nominations for a "list of the year," picking the best in a few different categories from the World of Warcraft in 2009. Go leave a nom for their awards, and then come back here -- we'll have our own year-end list of top stories as well.
• Kinless Chronicles has not had such a great experience with the Dungeon Finder so far. Low level DPS might be out of luck on finding groups fast.
• Tank Like a Girl examines some good tanking gear in the new Frozen Halls 5-mans.
• And while Alliance pride is hard to find, Kimberly D knows exactly why she's Horde.

Larisa makes an interesting observation about the Battlecry mosaic that's being assembled over on Blizzard's website. There certainly are a lot of Horde symbols there, and not quite so many Alliance symbols. The best information we have access to actually says that Alliance outnumber the Horde, and ancedotally, we know that's probably true. So why aren't the Alliance representing?

Now, it could just be specific to this outlet -- perhaps Horde players spend more time online, or have more free time in general, and thus have the knowhow and chance to submit their pictures. But this issue has come up before (on our podcast as well): while many Horde players are ready to jump in and shout "For the Horde!" at a moment's notice, not so many Alliance players are as open about their allegiances. As Larisa asks: where's the faction pride?

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When there's a dozen of Them for every one of You, life on a PvP server gets ugly. PvE progression crawls when your faction's population is so minuscule that you can't seem to assemble a PUG even during peak hours. You can't craft your way into better gear, because an anemic economy means no materials on the Auction House and no players in Trade waiting to craft with them. Log in on a night when the few of raiding guilds don't happen to be active, and you could find yourself looking at something like 40 other faction-mates online.

Welcome to the Alliance of US-Cho'gall. Current player activity levels average an abysmal 1 Alliance hour for every 12.7 Horde hours played -- something like a 1:7.5 player ratio, down from 1:15 earlier this year. An incredible community effort and guild named The Resistance rallied rerollers and transfers to infuse new life into the Alliance-side of this notoriously imbalanced community. While the campaign made an impressive stab at pulling the Alliance community up by its bootstraps, the severity of the situation took its toll, and things are not so bright for everyone on the blue side of the tracks. We visited with Aleksey, GM of another Alliance guild, to find out how the beleaguered Allies are holding up and what might help this Horde-crushed realm.

It's not unusual to see player speculation on what we'll see when Cataclysm arrives, and most of us have our own private wish lists. I'm sure I could come up with my own if I thought about it, but while riding between Kamagua and Moa'ki Harbor last night on the Kalu'ak ferry lazily chatting with people, it occurred to me that one of the things I'd kill to have again is another faction like the Tuskarr.

These guys are, for lack of a better word, awesome. Their emotes are fantastic. They sell an evil penguin pet and a cool fishing item (the Mastercraft Kalu'ak Fishing Pole) that probably won't be replaced for the duration of the expansion. Their ships are giant turtles traveling along beautiful coastline with a vendor on board (seriously, riding these at night = an endless series of Kodak moments). They get my vote as the faction that immerses you most thoroughly in what they need and what they're doing to survive in an increasingly hostile Azeroth, and I'm wondering if, given Northrend's various difficulties, they might be convinced to seek warmer climes just so we don't have to give them up.

Agonizing rep grinds have plagued the game since classic, but the Tuskarr are such a well-realized bunch that even at exalted I love hanging around their villages. What's your favorite faction, and is there anything about them you'd like to see repeated with future reputation grinds?

Today's question is possibly a strange one: what's this game's Holy Grail? You know, the Holy Grail is that Arthurian object that you continually quest for -- if ever you actually reach the Holy Grail, you know that your quest, whatever it is, is finally at an end. So what's the Holy Grail for World of Warcraft, the thing that, if we ever actually reached it in the game, would change things forever?

When we posted the rumor that Gnomeregan would finally be retaken, I thought of this -- Gnomeregan has been, since the beginning of the game, a place that's generally off-limits to lore and change. The Gnomes are pretty much defined by not having a city, and if they were actually to take back and reclaim their home city, Ironforge wouldn't be the same, and once you've messed with Ironforge, then WoW, to me, is fundamentally changed. Same thing if they ever include cross-faction communication -- this game is so defined from the core as a game with two factions separate from each other that if they ever did allow us to speak across factions, it'd be a different game. Not necessarily a bad game, not that I'd quit, but the game's so defined by that, in my mind, that if it ever actually happened, we'd end up on a whole other quest. So what do you think: what's WoW's Holy Grail?

It's one of the first choices you make when you start to play: Alliance or Horde? Horde or Alliance? Orcs or Elves? From thence forward, your entire gaming experience is defined by this decision. So -- which way did you choose? Do you fight for the glory of the Alliance? Or for the honor of the Horde? And whatever you chose... why? Did a particular race appeal to you? Were you joining friends? Do tell!

Earlier this week we reported on Nethaera's stunning revelation that faction changes were in the works. Yeah, I was just as amazed. It might just be an idea at the moment, a work in progress which we might not get access to until a patch or even the next expansion. The logistics are mind-boggling. Would this be a literally blending of species into factions so Humans could join the Horde and Taurens the Alliance or would your character literally be transformed into another species? How exactly would the lore work around that? We've had character customisation for a while now and the ability to change gender but changing faction and possibly even species. That a whole new kettle of fish.

So, constant readers, in the wake of this bombshell I'm very eager to know what you think. Does the very idea of changing faction seem contrary to how the game works? Would you consider jumping factions? Would you rather see characters choose whether to become Horde or Alliance? Could you change your very species to join the opposing faction? From a lore perspective, how do you think would this work and, indeed, does it need to have a basis in lore? After all no one questioned the gender change. What do you think?

Some people who play World of Warcraft really closely identify with one of the two factions, the Horde and the Alliance. They care about the ongoing lore of the divide, they argue back and forth about which side is in the wrong and who is doing what, or when which side committed a particular wrong or another. Now, we here at wow.com are no different in that regard, as you saw when you followed those links. We're passionate about the game, and that includes the lore.

However, I've always been less a factional player (I have and love Horde and Alliance toons pretty equally, and I think both sides of the Horde/Alliance enmity have good and bad points) and more of a class partisan. I pretty much love shamans and warriors and don't really like playing other classes. I'll defend my chosen classes, gush about them, rant about what I think needs fixing, and play those classes to the exclusion of others even when I know that objectively those other classes might well be just as much fun. I just can't bring myself to support other classes, play them, or even in my heart embrace them as fully as shamans and warriors. I'm not pretending my behavior is anything more than the strange mental quirk of a particular player, but it got me wondering: what other strange divisions are out there in active play? My lovely wife, for example, won't tame a pet unless it has a unique skin or is harder than normal to get. She just loves the challenge.

Do you find youself making a choice, whether it be Horde vs. Alliance, a specific class, a race, a profession, or a style of play that draws a solid line of demarcation for you in game? Roleplayers vs. non-Roleplayers? Will you only raid 10 man? Are you a partisan for PvP and barely even bother with instances? What do you cleave to in WoW, and what do you reject?

Kinka of Spinebreaker posts a question that I haven't seen anyone ask for a while; does the Horde really have more faction pride? Various reasons are this feeling are offered, from the lack of a strong Alliance-side leader (with Varian Wrynn feeling like a shoehorned, and controversial claimant to that position), to the less unified Alliance leveling experience, to more philosophical assertions from Filara of Terenas concerning early Horde differences continuing to exercise an influence to this day. In classic WoW, Filara observes, the Horde population on each server was typically small and outgunned. People knew each other, could network easily, banded together againt superior Alliance numbers in world PvP, and -- when battlegrounds became available -- could typically get games significantly faster than their Alliance counterparts. Add the numbers up and it's easy to see how faction difference became part of WoW's conventional wisdom.

What interests me more is how rarely we see this question come up nowadays. During and shortly after classic WoW, comparison of the two factions was both inevitable and the source of major fights on the forums. Despite being outnumbered on the vast majority of servers, Horde routinely encountered more battleground success -- or so went the popular theory. As BC went on and the Alliance slowly lost a bit (though by no means all) of its population advantage thanks (let's be perfectly honest here) to the influx of Blood Elves to the Horde, it's possible that some of both factions' finer "cultural" distinctions have been somewhat eroded, if they ever existed at all.