Mend Pet

This post began as a comment in response to Gnomeaggedon’s post about Neutral Auction Houses, but I have a habit of getting wordy and didn’t want to flood his comments   So I decided to write my own quick post on the topic!

Basically, Gnome proposed putting Neutral Auction Houses in Dalaran and Shattrath.  I’d never really heard this idea before, I’d only heard of people asking for regular AHs in these cities.  And I can certainly see his points, the neutral auction houses have barely a scintilla of activity now, and this would give them a nice boost.  Plus then of course you wouldn’t have to go back to the old world any more.

I know the first time I was in Shattrath and looked for an Auction House, I was pretty annoyed when the guard simply pointed me at the portals to the old world.  But when I consider the following issues, I’m actually kind of glad there aren’t any in the sanctuary cities.

Firstly, Dalaran is already populated enough, and the major cities themselves are still always quite busy – imagine throwing all of those people in Dal too?  Yikes.  Lag mitigation is huge by having people spilt over old world and Northrend servers, and I’m sure no one would be happy if it took them even longer to load Dalaran than it does now.

Secondly, there would be flooding in the market.  If they put a neutral AH in Dal, let’s face it, no one would use the faction based ones.  Even if the AH cut was higher, I think the laziness of people outweighs it, and they would just up their prices to help make up for the cut.  Even though the number of customers to the AH would double, there would be at least double the goods being sold causing more competition and causing major economic issues.

If everyone is just going to be hanging out in the same city and using the same AH… why not remove faction restrictions all together?  Once you hit level 80, there would be no difference between Alliance and Horde, they’d be one happy family sharing a home, bank and AH!

Lastly, (and I think they mentioned this in The Instance), can you imagine leveling a character from 1-70 and almost never having contact with anyone?  Might as well play a solo RPG.  You’d also never be able to buy anything on the AH, since it’d turn into what the neutral AH is now – overpriced and understocked.

Luckily, they are cutting the hearthstone cooldown to a mere 30 minutes, so it will be even less of a big deal!

I’d rather hang out in IF or Org than Dal anyway

So those are my thoughts on the topic – thanks to Gnome for giving me something to write about!

I love the Horde.  Anyone who knows me at all knows this.  But why do I love the Horde so much?  And not just me, but why is there so much pride for players of this faction?  This is the question I’ve asked myself.

NOTE: Instead of saying “except the Blood Elves” all the time, I’ll just make a disclaimer that I am not a big fan of them.  They don’t count as part of the Horde as far as I’m concerned, in this post at least.

First of all, I think the Horde has such strong lore around its leaders.  And what is a faction without its leaders?  Thrall and Sylvannas especially have great stories behind them, and you can really feel like you have a connection to them if you learn their stories.

The Alliance?  Not so much.  Who have they got?  Jaina Proudmore?  Okay, she’s pretty cool.  But she’s not even truly Alliance – she’s almost neutral.  Her and Thrall?  Giggity-giggity is all I’ve got to say there.

It’s not even just the leaders.  The story behind the Horde draws so much more sympathy from me.  They’re the underdogs, they’re trying to make their place in this new home and ally themselves with their neighbours.  While the Alliance are just kind of there, holding on to the threads of an allegiance formed to fight a force which is no longer there.

Another point for the Horde for me is their races.  I tend to shy away from human-like characters when I play games.  Humans, Dwarves, even Gnomes are just not colourful enough for me.  If I wanted to be a human, I’d just, well, I AM a human, so I’d just be.  When I play a game, I want to be something different, and not just in height (or ear length) but actually different.  Humans are boring.

Now, it’s not like I have a whole lot against the Alliance.  In fact, I’ve secretly got a level 50 Gnome Mage that I’ve leveled up and been playing quite a bit more lately.  But I just don’t feel a connection to the faction itself.  And I don’t see other players displaying the same pride that players of the Horde do.

There seems to be a stronger connection to players of the Horde to their faction than players of the Alliance to theirs.  This brings to mind the whole debate from the WoW Insider Show… the cheer or battle cry of the Alliance?  They don’t really have one.  And the ones they do have are either copying the Horde, or based on the fact that they don’t like the Horde.  “For the Alliance!”  You just can’t say that with as much passion and pride as you can say “For the Horde!”  Can you think of a good one?  One that isn’t class or race specific?  (Not “For Gnomeregan!” or “For the Light!”, as they aren’t general enough to encompass the faction as a whole.)

I think the fact that I leveled on a PvP server may have also had an effect on my Horde allegiance.  When you’re on a PvE server, and you can quest right along side the Alliance… you might not form the same rivalry as when you can kill and get killed by them.

Also, the Alliance has Night Elves.  /hate.

Alright!  I’m jumping on what seems to be quite the bandwagon.  With not too much to do between now and the expansion, I’m going to take my spare time to work on the factions I don’t have exalted, that are within a reasonable reach. I’ve actually always liked doing rep grinds, I guess it’s the same part of me that enjoys fishing in game.  It’s relaxing and still productive – like playing Solitaire but with eventual rewards!

There aren’t very many, but here’s a list of the factions I’ve already got to exalted:

• The Aldor
• Cenarion Expedition
• Frostwolf Clan
• The Mag’har
• Netherwing
• The Sha’tar
• Shattered Sun Offensive
• The Violet Eye

Currently at Revered:

• The Consortium
• Darkspear Trolls
• Keepers of Time
• Lower City
• Orgrimmar
• Ogri’la
• Thrallmar