The Cranky Old Gnome

Ok I’m a little late to the party on this, but I can never resist a good survey.  Jessabelle at Miss Medicina created this questionaire-definitly-not-a-meme-survey-thing that I think is really interesting.

For those visiting my site for the first time and got directed to this post, my main in a lvl 80 gnome tank, but my second main is lvl 80 resto shaman.  So I feel like this is a good thing for me to post for my healing side.

More info on the questionaire-definitely-not-a-meme-survey-thing can be found here.

Survey Says

There’s a Tom Petty song I’d like to quote from if I may;

It’s time to move on
It’s time to get goin’
What lies ahead I have no way of knowin’
But under my feet baby, grass is growin’
Yeah, it’s time to move on
It’s time to get goin’

I have decided to step down as the guild leader of Higher Education.  I don’t want to make a big thing of it or go into long winded details.  But I wanted to state on the record that I’m turning over the reigns to Wizzbang.

The rest of this post is meant for the members of Higher Education.  I won’t stop people from reading it, but from here on I’m talking directly to them.

Time to move on

Alright time for a quick rant.  You know what absolutely drives me crazy?  People who do not release after a wipe, and people who wait for summons to instances.

Ok so first people who don’t release after a wipe–what the hell?  If everyone is dead, there is no-one to rez you.  That means while you and your lazy self are lying there waiting for a healer to show up, everyone else is running back through the instance.  And some instances are not short.  It’s just rude.  It says that your time and energy is somehow more valuable then everyone else.  Now, if it happens occasionally, like there’s a wipe on a really frustrating boss and you just need to step away you can say, “I need to go afk a sec, could someone please rez me?”  And when I’m the healer, if we wipe and one person doesn’t release and run and doesn’t say anything other than ‘rez plz’ I will ignore them.  And even if they ask nicely the first time, the second time they are on their own.

Your virtual legs work just as well as mine do you lazy jerk!  Release and run back.  Stop being an ass.

Then there’s the other people–who as soon as they get into a group, before the say anything else they chime in with, “summons pls.”  They are apparently so busy with whatever they are doing that not only can they cannot take the time to make their way towards an instance, but they can’t even be bothered to fully type out ‘please’.  You know when it really stood out to me that there was a summoning problem was right after Wrath came out and people started running the Violet Hold.  Most of you know this, but for those that don’t, the Violet Hold is in Dalaran and there is no summoning stone.*  So right after Wrath was release people would ask for summons to Dalaran all the time, and some of them were very very adamant that there was a summoning stone and the rest of us were just being jerks.  Now, there are some understandable exceptions to this as well.  If we are going to Halls of Lightning or something and 4 of the 5 people are in Northrend and the 5th person is in the Shimmering Flats, it may make more sense to summon that last person.  But I would still prefer that they make a token effort or at least type a full sentence with complete words.  Something like, “hey since I’m stuck aaaaaaall the way down in Shimmering Flats and my hearthstone is on cooldown, would you mind summoning me?”  The group might chuckle a bit, but really they aren’t laughing at you.  They are laughing because they are surprised by your etiquette and all the times in the past all they’ve gotten is “summons pls”.

“[Insert clever sign off phrase here]”

~Fizz

*Can you imagine the abuse if there were a summoning stone in Dalaran?  Oh, your hearth’s on cooldown? No problem, just group up with a few people and get summoned to Dalaran.  You think the lag is bad now? Hoo-boy I don’t even want to think about what it would be like if there was a stone in Dalaran.

Today I finally earned the achievement “What A Long Strange Trip It’s Been”!  I had picked up the helm and sinister squashling a couple days ago, but hadn’t finished the achievement “Check Your Head”.  I still had to put a pumpkin on the head of a Draenei, and wanted to wait until people in my guild were actually online.  But since I don’t seem to have been online at the same time as them recently I decided I was tired of waiting.  I wanted my proto-drake!  So I headed to Dalaran and walked around a bit, searching for just the right Draenei.  I found one, a paladin named Lewtybewts.  I really got a kick out of her name, and recognized her as one of the people I had run the Headless Horseman with.  So I snuck up behind her and BAM!

Thistlefizz has earned the achievement [Check Your Head]!
Thistlefizz has earned the achievement [Hallowed Be Thy Name]!
Thistlefizz has earned the achievement [What A Long Strange Trip It’s Been]!

It was very exciting, and she was a good sport about humoring me and got excited about the cool new mount.  And, I promised her screen shots, so here they are:

Lewtybewts Pumpkined!

Three Achievements at once!

Look how pretty!

I’m really excited to finally be riding a proto-drake!  I’ve been trying for that dang bronze one in Culling of Stratholme…but we all know how well that’s been going.  So a very special thanks to Lewtybewts for being a good sport and humoring me, and for helping me wrap up a years worth of work and earn my sexy Violet Proto Drake!

As a side note, you may have noticed in my first creen shot that I’m tracking my Loremaster of Kalimdor Achievement.  As of this posting, I only need 48 more quests and then it’s on to Icecrown to finish off The Loremaster!

“[Insert clever sign off phrase here]”

And now, story-time with rich Uncle Wizzbang!

Will Blizzard screw up their own lore again? A lot of us are wondering this, especially in response to the new Worgen lore. And frankly, our fears are justified. You see, once upon a time there were two races, the Eredar and the Draenei.

The Eredar were an evil race of giant, demonic beings who joined the Burning Legion because…well…it seemed like fun to them. They were evil to the core and wholeheartedly signed on to serve Sargeras in his quest to tear the universe apart. They were the leaders and masterminds behind the various invasions, especially the Third War (shown in WarCraft III), after their master was defeated. The Draenei on the other hand were a strange, gray race of outcasts native to Draenor (aka: Outland), some of whom who had escaped through the Dark Portal to Azeroth. We were first introduced to them in the WarCraft III expansion, The Frozen Throne, and by the time we met them in “vanilla WoW”, some of them had gone insane, while others had set up a tiny enclave in the Swamp of Sorrows and were just doing their best to survive on what was to them a hostile, alien world. The Eredar and the Draenei were two completely different races with two very distinct histories and two very different appearances. That is what the WarCraft III manuals say, it’s what the WoW pen-and-paper RPG manuals said, and it’s what the “vanilla WoW” quests all said.

Then came the Burning Legion expansion – Blizzard decided to give the Horde a “pretty” new race, the Blood Elves, but couldn’t seem to figure out what to give the Alliance. There was an April Fool’s Day joke claiming the new race for the Alliance would be the Wisps, and we all had a good laugh, then turned to Blizzard and said “No, really. Who’s it going to be?” Well, soon enough the announcement came — it would be the Draenei! “Oh, neat!” we all said. “You mean the weird gray guys from the Swamp of Sorrows?” “No,” Blizzard responded. “Better! Check out the website!” So we looked at the page they’d set up and right away noticed something was…off. “Uh, Blizzard?” we said. “Why are there pictures of Eredar all over the Draenei page?” “Oh, see,” explained Blizzard, “the Eredar are actually corrupt versions of the Draenei who were seduced by Sargeras! In fact, the Draenei were themselves aliens who settled on Draenor (now called Outland) when they were trying to flee their corrupt relatives. The ones you meet in the Swamp of Sorrows have been mutated by the magical energies which were unleashed during the war on Draenor. And the real Draenei worship the Holy Light!” We all looked at each other, laughed nervously, and said “Ha ha, good one, Blizzard! But no, really. What’s with the Eredar?” “What do you mean?” Blizzard responded. “Well, the manuals say that they were a single evil race that was always evil and that Sargeras recruited them because of that. The Draenei are completely different.” Bizzard got real quiet right about then. “Uh, what?” We blinked. “The…the manuals. The ones you published. For WC3 and the expansion to WC3, and WoW, and all the pen-and-paper WoW roleplaying games?” Blizzard stammered for a moment, said “Hey! Look over there!” and then ran away.

In time Blizzard reluctantly admitted their mistake — they’d screwed up their own lore and had to heavily retcon the entire history of Draenor, the Draenei and Garona Half-Orcen (who hasn’t been seen or heard of since). Then they “politely asked” us to stop talking about it. Oh, but that wasn’t the end of it. The Burning Crusade expansion was full of intriguing quest-lines that dead-ended, characters who were clearly intended to serve an important function but who were apparently forgotten shortly after launch, and promises of revelations that never came. Can anyone say Alleria and Turalyon, and their son in Honor Hold? How about the conversation in the inn in the “Caverns of Time: Old Hillsbrad” event? That smith out on a ledge in Terokkar, David Wayne, who seems to match a promise from the old Ashbringer event in the Scarlet Monastery’s Cathedral? And don’t get me started with all the dead-end quest-lines from “vanilla WoW” that promised information linked to Ashbringer! Or the entrances to Mount Hyjal that never opened! *twitch*

So how does this relate to the expansion?

Well, overall I’ve been impressed with the way Blizzard has handled introducing the Goblins as a Horde race (for the second time). How do they explain having Horde-allied Goblins AND neutral Goblins? Politics. Remember, once upon a time (in WarCraft II) the Goblins were affiliated with the Horde – they only became neutral after the Horde’s loss in that war. And the Goblins who side with the Horde in Cataclysm will be affiliated with a completely different cartel than the neutral ones, and therefore have no real reason to remain neutral, especially after they’re betrayed by the Trade Prince and wind-up in the middle of an Alliance/Horde skirmish. It makes sense, it involves pre-existing lore, and it doesn’t involve a wave of the magic Orwellian “retcon” wand.

It’s the details of the Worgen lore that many of us feel conflicted about. That might be because even in vanilla WoW there were a variety of odd inconsistencies. See, almost everything we’ve seen in the Lore implies that the Worgen are their own race, beings from another world summoned to this one – there are a pair of quest-chains in Ashenvale and Duskwood that explicitly portray them as alien beings summoned by the Scythe of Elune to Azeroth. In the context of these quests, they absolutely aren’t cursed humans or cursed members of any other race. And then there’s Pyrewood, a village you might not be familiar with if you haven’t played one of the Forsaken or the Blood Elves. The humans in Pyrewood, as part of his campaign against the Scourge, were cursed by Arugal into becoming Worgen at night so they could defend themselves and their land. As humans they are friendly to Alliance players and hostile to the Horde; but at night they’ll kill everyone. We’re curious to see what will come of this “cursed” aspect of Worgen existence. The curse apparently can’t be transferred by bites because otherwise player characters (or non-Pyrewood NPCs) would find theoretically themselves similarly “cursed” when they fight the Worgen (though Blizzard could just be ignoring that aspect).

But Blizzard also brought Arugal and the Worgen back in a new and improved form for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Now one could argue that this iteration of the Worgen is different, subject to different rules than the other two types introduced in “vanilla WoW”; those who have played through the quests in Grizzly Peaks will know to what I’m referring. The problem is that these Worgen seem even less suitable as player characters, and certainly don’t seem related to the Worgen which will be inhabiting Gilneas next year. The only argument i can think of for their relevance to the playable Worgen issue is that they establish a greater variability, thereby giving Blizzard more wiggle room — not unlike the way the Death Knights in WCII bear no relation to the Death Knights in WCIII which bear no apparent relation to the playable Death Knights introduced in WotLK.

So we have a variety of possible approaches to the Worgen as a player race and to the fact that they’re actually the human citizens of Gilneas – all of which need to explain that the Sons of Arugal Worgen in Silverpine WEREN’T originally human, and that the people of Pyrewood are only nocturnally Worgen, and that somehow (as the Blizzard Cataclysm info has indicated) the cursing of the people of Gilneas was a result of some magic spell gone wild (which somehow got beyond the gates of the isolationist kingdom but nowhere else) and had absolutely nothing to do with any sort of cult.

So will Worgen be the new Draenei? Good gravy, I hope not. If they are, not only will it cause excessive fuming and ranting on the forums, but it’ll become another arrow in the quiver of people who have long suspected that Blizzard doesn’t care about Alliance people.