BRK says that they made 200 purple shirts, which were apparently gone four hours before the race even started. The 500 person guild they formed filled up quickly, and estimates say that at peak, there were probably about 630 people on for the event, double the number of Horde on there most of the time. The winner of the race, Slokoshka, picked up a game card for their troubles, and then, not content with leaving hoof marks across half of Azeroth, the Tauren decided to raid Ironforge and made quite a mess of things there, too.
Seems like a lot of fun, and it all went for a good cause, too -- not only did everybody /moo for Sharvan, BRK and Ratshag's friend who passed away recently, but they also raised over $500 for Sharvan's family, who we're told also attended the race and were completely touched by how generous the WoW community can be. Very awesome.
One of my favorite quests of all time is Ruse of the Ashtongue, to the point where I won't even turn the quest in no matter how many times we kill Al'ar. The reason I love it? Because it lets me experience what it would be like to switch my main, only not to my ordinary draenei warrior, but rather to a super-awesomely deformed and cool broken. I've always been dreading turning it in and now that we don't have to do so to get keyed for BT, I'm debating waiting until we're done with Tempest Keep once and for all (I could have already completed An Artifact From the Past this past week but I don't want to) just so I can tank as a broken every week.
Frankly, I've always wanted the option to play as a broken from the moment they introduced the draenei as a playable race. If I could, I would switch race to broken in a country minute. I just think they're awesome. The only other race who piques my interest this much are the worgen, and I think they'd look kind of dumb in my gear, but the broken have this whole 'Hulk smash' vibe and I've always liked their voice emotes. "Must not give up... must....remember the light."
Zjo asks on the European Forums, as many have done before her, if there is any possibility of changing races. Her point is that with changes to racial abilities, the choice you made several levels ago may no longer be the one you would make today.
I can see both sides of this issue. On the one hand, it would be difficult to come up with an in-world, non-lore-breaking way to implement this change. Going to a barbershop to change your hair makes sense. Converting from Human to Gnome, does not.
On the other hand, the racial abilities changed without any thought to lore. So if Blizzard wants to make changes to balance the game, why not let players change their race if they don't like Blizzard's changes?
Personally, I don't think they should, but if they do, it should be one time only with a fee attached. But I like re-rolling. Alts are fun!
We've asked before if you would, but I'm asking today if you think you should be able to change your race rather than being forced to re-roll? And if so, how do you think it should be implemented? Do you think re-rolling is too much of a pain or part of the fun of the game?
The Azrothean primary elections are coming to close.Unsurprisingly, Thrall is a runaway candidate for leader of the Horde.The Warchief is carrying 70% of the vote, the closest competitor Lady Sylvanas Windrunner has only 14.8%.Thrall is currently preparing his campaign team for the general election.Windrunner is rumored to be preparing her forces for non-political endeavors.
Due to overwhelming support from write-in voters, Lady Jaina Proudmoore has decided to enter the election contest as an independent candidate.She would like to thank everyone for their support and promises an excellent running in the general election.
Remember to vote for your candidate by March 20, 2008. Rock (paper, scissors) the vote!
All the World's a Stage is brought to you by David Bowers every Sunday evening, investigating the explorative performance art of roleplaying in the World of Warcraft.
For a long time now I've wanted to write an introductory guide on how to get started as a roleplayer. After all, roleplaying is something a lot of people would like to try, but really don't know how to begin. The problem with getting started is that various misconceived assumptions may sometimes block us from trying and dampen our enthusiasm. In the particular case of roleplaying, these mistaken assumptions might be along the lines of: "Roleplaying is lying to people about who you are," and "roleplaying is something weird people do," and "roleplaying is a waste of time for noobs." To the contrary, we have seen in previous articles that roleplaying is actually an exploration of who you are, a way to understand and connect with other people, and, in fact, a variant on things perfectly normal people do all the time anyway.
So now -- where to actually begin? Certainly there is no perfect way to begin as a roleplayer, so today I'll outline three basic steps, which you can try and see if they work for you. I would be particularly interested in feedback from people who try out this method as first time roleplayers: if you do try it and have a great time, please come back and tell us about it; or if you try and something doesn't work, come back and tell us what went wrong. It's been a long time since I was a beginning roleplayer, and though I'll do my best to plot a path into this hobby, I only got to be a beginner once! Perhaps other beginning roleplayers will also share their experiences below, and you can see which path suits you best.
Sure, you've seen Tauren racing, but it's just not quite the same as seeing an equal number of adorably tiny cotton-candy-hair Gnomes racing. This shot, sent in by reader Svenn of Aggramar (EU) shows a crowd of the charming beasts preparing for the Gnome race portion of the Laughing Skull Olympics, held on Laughing Skull (EU) at the end of July. And if this screenshot is to be taken as evidence, I'd venture a guess that the event was a blast for everyone involved!
Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth or Outland that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com! Or perhaps you'd just like to see more of your pics from Around Azeroth.
This was the scene last night on the Horde side of Zangarmarsh, as WoW Insider's It Came from the Blog made bovine history and ran roughly 500 cows from Mulgore to Stormwind. Amidst shouts of "For the Herd!" and "Moooo," hundreds of level one Taurens appeared in Camp Narache -- blue shirts were premade by our own Krystalle and given out to the guildies that showed up, but first we ran out of shirts, and then we ran out of guild invites as we hit the system limit. Last I heard we had eight raid groups going, we had taken over one Ventrilo server, tons of guilds from both Zangarmarsh and other realms (including those down for maintenance) got involved, and at least a few thousand yells went out across the land. Finally, at 8pm server, Krystalle counted us down and the race began.
We stuck to the road for a good thirty seconds, but eventually got split up in the Barrens-- we'd planned to all go on the Zep, but another group (including me), split off to take the boat from Ratchet. In Stranglethorn, many burgers were made-- I stuck to the center of the group and watched cows get downed by tigers left and right. I didn't die until Westfall, when stupid human guards on the road decided to one-shot me.
Finally, at Stormwind, the scene was chaos-- cows dead everywhere, as stepping inside an Alliance city, even on a PvE server, flags you. People were AoEing on the Stormwind bridge, and even just inside the city, guards were felling cows left and right. A few people made it to the tram (unfortunately, the closest graveyard useable by Horde is all the way at the Eastvale Logging Camp, so it was a long run back), but we heard that the first person to find our Alliance plant, Insiderspy, and blow her a kiss, was Fiverr, our winner. Fiverr gets exactly what everyone else got, though-- a great time. Here's a gallery of what happened (updated as we add more and more photos to it), and we'll put more videos after the break as we find and hear about them. Thanks to everyone who came out! For the Herd!
*edited to add* Another video is available after the jump!
Newcomers to Azeroth are met with a choice as to which race they should choose. Undoubtedly, the most immediately recognizable and familiar choice is that of the humans. But are the humans of Azeroth really just Azerothian versions of us Earthlings, or are they better understood as a distinct species of their own?
The most obvious difference at first glance is that in Azeroth, all men are blocky and all women are curvy. Aside from various facial traits, hair and skin color, humans don't vary from this standard mold. Even in advanced age, Azerothian women's breasts do not sag, nor do men's muscles lose their beefy bulkiness. Some Earthlings have disparagingly compared Azerothian men to gorillas for their tree-trunk arms and their "smashed-with-a-shovel" faces, but others point out that Azerothian humans have been hardened through great suffering. Wars with orcs, demons and undead have reduced their population from millions to mere hundreds of thousands, and so the weak humans of Azeroth have possibly been weeded out. So, while many Earthling humans may enjoy the comforts of working at a desk all day, then coming home to play at a desk too (i.e. via computer game), Azerothians, even old ones, have to keep themselves fit to fight off the various enemies encroaching on their lands, such as murloc flesheaters and forsaken undead. While this may explain the over-muscled arms of Azerothian males, it leaves the question of youthfully curved elderly women quite unanswered.
The other night we finished the Path of Conquest quest chain in Shadowmoon, and I found myself running around blasting Colossi as a Blood Elf.It was fascinating to see what I would look like if I had rerolled my character, something I consider on and off just for fun.
Often times we get a chance to respec our talents.What if we could respec our race?If there was a free chance to reselect your character's race, would you choose differently? I know despite the faction shift the Blood Elf race is looking very tempting after playing a human for so long.
All the way back in October 2006, we asked you what your favorite race was, and since we have two more now, I think it's worth asking again. Of course some races have incredibly useful racial abilities -- will of the forsaken and fear ward come immediately to mind -- that make race choice an important one. But just as often a player's choice of race is made for cosmetic reasons, due to preference in starting zones, or because of personal reasons we may never know. Why do we have troll mages, orc warlocks, or night elf priests, after all? It's not because they're the best racial options for their faction or class -- it's because someone sincirely liked those races.
As for me -- I've got a troll priest. Why not an undead priest? I could have cannibalize (great for soloing), will of the forsaken (excellent throughout the game), touch of weakness, and devouring plague. Instead, I have berserking, hex of weakness (not bad for raid situations, and entertaining for annoying people in PvP), and shadowguard. These skills have their uses, but overall, the undead's racial abilities are distinctly better. So why a troll? Well, I happen think they have very cool hair options, and I'd prefer playing them to an undead any day. So what's your favorite race -- and why?
While there have been unofficial announcements on the classes that would be available to each of these new races, it's only today that we've gotten official word on what each race will be able to play. So, with the release of the Burning Crusade, new Draenei players will be able to choose from warrior, paladin, hunter, priest, shaman, and mage options, while new Blood Elves will be able to pick from paladin, hunter, rogue, priest, mage, and warlock. The biggest surprise here is that Blood Elves won't be able to be warriors - a surprise since the preliminary information on the subject suggested that they would. CM Eyonix tells us that they simply wanted an equal number of classes available to the Draenei and the Blood Elves, so one class had to be cut - and the class that made the most sense was warrior.
When the Draenei race was initially announced, a Blizzard poster said that, tentatively, Draenei could be warriors, priests, mages, hunters, and paladins. With the more recent announcement that Draenei would be able to become shamans, many (myself included) wondered if they would still be able to be paladins. However, Tseric recently confirmed that Draenei will still be able to play paladins - which seems fair, as it would leave the Alliance with three paladin races and the Horde with three shaman races. Lore-wise it seems somewhat murky territory - weren't the Draenei supposedly a shamanistic society before their integration into the Burning Crusade, when it was revealed that they were introduced to the Light? I was never much of a loremaster myself, so the changes that seem to be getting made to the history of Azeroth continue to baffle me...
During Birdie 16, a large LAN party held in Sweden, they arranged a large Gnome race from Ironforge to Stormwind - and have shared the fun with us in the form of this video. Enjoy!
Last week I mentioned an article that talked about the cultural borrowing we see in World of Warcraft, and today I ran across a post on New Game Plus that looks at the same topic from a different perspective - the commodification and trafficking of virtual items and characters. The article points out that female avatars tend to sell for less than male avatars, leading to the question of how the racial typing may also impact the perceived value of the character. Interesting food for thought.
Terra Nova has an interesting article about the "cultural borrowing" that takes place in World of Warcraft - the way certain races in Azeroth have characteristics shared with social and ethnic groups from the real world. However, I do wonder whether the characterization is really a negative one when the different factions (both the primitive Horde and the refined Alliance) are shown with equal strength and capability. Regardless, the article does present some very interesting food for thought.
The Azrothean primary elections are coming to close.
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