Grass is always greener on the other side of the fence

Warning: ‘Generalizations’ and ‘Exaggerations’ ahead ^_^

K (Night Elf ) of More Dots! More Dots! has posted a few discussions on racial abilities and the imbalance between horde and alliance (and let me tell you – you remember the crying alliance druid? the guy I test run all my BG posts in conversation on, like the AV one, he has never let up on the ‘great racial disadvantages of the alliance’ … it’s a topic I could get drunk on if I happened to playing some college drinking game based on the discussion.)

In anycase More Dots! posts can be found at Racial Imbalance: The Horde in General & The Alliance in General. It’s a great analytical look at the stats and figures from an alliance perspective (which K admits up front and then invites debate about *grin* and he didn’t QQ half as much as The Crying Druid.)

An amusing quote from the post which I liked:

Now, one can argue that the very names tell why. The HORDE versus the ALLIANCE. Hordes are fury barely contained. They are offensive, they are brutal. They are a horde. Alliance denotes civilization, having tea and crumpets, walking the dog and watching hummingbirds at feeders.

Of course K kinda takes back the tepid Alliance description … snap.

My personal opinion:
Does no one ever pity the Horde for having less PVE (instance related) abilities? Blizzard’s been slowly equalizing the playing field and looks like they will further do so come Wrath, but waaaaay back in the day it was common knowledge that if you really wanted PVE progression it was easier alliance side, not because of the racials specifically, but because just about everything to do with the alliance design and ‘culture’ screamed lets group up and PVE :p (Yes Sir! I shall pack the crumpets Sir!)

Aye and Horde were indeed considered the PVP side – so of course many who chose horde would also pick a PVP server. But you logged on knowing that as a general rule (unless you had researched & carefully selected your server) you were pretty much going to be outnumbered, and much like Sparta your people were probably considered tough because they got eaten alive in areas like Ashenvale, Tarren Mill, and the Stranglethorn Vale … making them semi-bitter level 60’s who take to riding the roads of such zones in war bands (I miss how common horde war bands used to be) offering to shove their shields down the throats of any alliance giving small hordets a similar education – these war bands in turn would fire up the alliance… oh wait getting off topic. (Now I feel like an old “in the glory days” grandorc – you know I’m looking forward to having all the BC babies join me in the ‘back in my day’ rambling come Lich King … cackle.)

But heck how many Horde had to pug the big instances? It got to be a bit of a ‘WoW Joke’ at one point, like how hunter pet pathing and an avian pet’s screech still is. I reckon most the problem sort of sprung from the perceived ‘PVP side’ & ‘PVE side’ image Horde & Alliance made themselves. You wanted to PVP you would go horde for the advantage… more interested in PVE? Well then certainly you wouldn’t really want to play horde would you? Thus when rolling on a horde server finding a big useful PVE guild got a bit harder (and if it was too difficult off you would go to try the alliance side) – kinda a snowball case of the ‘what came first the chicken or the egg’ game eh.

See there’s another tip of the hat to WoW ‘cultural’ assumptions – I reckon a lot of @sshats (see nother generalization) on PVE servers are going to roll horde for the ‘advantage’, being jerks who want to pvp they will use their racials a lot. Whereas playing as your general ‘I just want to quest in peace’ PVEer you may not even have the racial ability on your UI if it doesn’t help in PVE or you may avoid it because it can get you flagged (Stomp Stomp ahh crap.) If you don’t practice using your racial to the best advantage you are going to feel like it is a crap talent.

It’s my belief that ‘the advantage’, well it’s all in how you use your racial (I mean heck do you even remember to use your racials? When I play BE I completely neglect it due to cooldown boredom.)  My orc racials are kinda à la ‘easy’ mode, I just macro the Blood Fury to a use trinket/drums etc big damage boost button. I’m sure there are other ways to fine tune this to get the most for your buck so-to-say, and better times to use it in instances than others.

But take gnomes… this one warsong gulch was practically won for the alliance side by a squishy gnome mage, he had knowledge of all his outs, all his CC and knew how to take control of the situation, you can bet that he remembered his racial and used it in conjunction with his other abilities. And he was rolling in the luck, when I finally thought we had forced him to burn all his cooldowns some warrior smacks him and the little sod procs ‘Blazing Speed’ and shoots off into the horizon, to add injury to insult he had pink hair and didn’t appear to be an extreme twink. And engineering gnome rogues? arrgh I just want to kick em off the LM cliff – but they would just float over to the BS.

The way it works you should be able to pick your faction, then your class, then decide which skills will be best for PVE or PVP and line em up from best to worse and select your race based on what you want to do most. Hmmm but looking around the blogging community people rather value their race alongside their class. Don’t try telling a Tauren hunter that they can’t PVP or PVE, chances are they have probably found a way to make it work for them. WoW’s nice and forgiving like that – minority specs, minority race+classes still work if people put thought and research into it. Heck if you feel your racial doesn’t give you enough advantage you can always pick up some engineering for nick-knacks.

If we are taking an alliance race into PVP, like arenas which are more structured:

• I hear dwarven stone form is great for striping poisons and allowing a vanish in arenas

• The whole shadowmeld + drink trick has made some bloggers develop a racial/class hatred

• Perception as a human rogue can give you an opener on other rogues

• I hear shadowmeld adds an extra lvl to your stealth and can be used outside the stealth cooldown

..its all in how you use it really. I mean I reckon everyone who blogs about a race as well as a class no doubt has a few tricky uses for their racial ability that they get a kick out of employing.

The problem about the ‘Horde have better PVP racials’ attitude is it smacks of defeatism … and then you have halfway lost the fight already – you could be facing a player who is on an alt and doesn’t really understand what war-stomp is for, or it could be a player who has burnt cooldowns earlier. The ‘oh-dear-god-why-fight-I-had better-run’ thing will probably get you killed. I loved playing the shaman before they got neutered into a PVE heal class (ahh heck I still love playing them), because people would run … meaning for the most part you would just follow behind frost shocking and walloping with your axe waiting for windfury luck to finish them off. But luck is not skill, people really shouldn’t have been giving me that sorta opening because I was a fairly new player in bad gear and easy to roast, stab and BBQ whenever anyone  bothered to turn around and face me. Thunderstomp? whats that for?… tee-hee.

Racial abilities the alliance have that make me somewhat greener than I already am with envy:

A Human’s increased rep gain (oh god come the BC rep grinds how my orc could have used you T_T I am still only sitting honored-revered for many factions.) Just think really thats like 10% less ogres to kill, 10% less arakkoa to kill, 10% less narga, 10% less… ahh I’ll shut up now.

A Dreanei’s Hit percentage *insert a frikken hunter snarl of gimmie your goddarned hit gimme* you think collecting and making a hit set for PVE instances was FUN for a mostly solo BG enthusiast? My PVP gear frankly doesn’t cut it and here the spaceberries have this damn brilliant bonus which they can share with their PET… I’m just going to go sit all stoic in the corner and if you call it sulking and remind me of orc pet damage bonus I’m going to slap you with my crossbow till I no longer see the misty vision of miss miss miss scrolling down my combat screen.

Gnome Size and general alliance smallness – ever seen a tauren get stuck by the horns on a doorway… its sad. BC Elekks have sort of evened the size odds, but mounting up and riding with a bunch of Tauren on Kodo can comfortably be compared to diving with a road-train of trucks or buses. I took a picture of on EotS starting area a while back when going on about dailies… there were like 4-5 Tauren already in the picture and it was just the start of the group up. Heh unless you roll a Tauren druid you pretty much don’t get the ‘hide-to-avoid-the fight’ option (well least if there are no giant animal carcasses around) as much as most races. It usually comes down to do or die… and at that point you may as well get a hit in. No wonder horde get the fierce rep, massive cow beast charging straight at you… but really he’s probably crying on the inside :p .

Still I like Taurens – people who like Taurens should check out the How I WoW podcast episode 9 just for the opening song

Night Elf wisp - I hate corpse runs with a passion because they are soooo damn slow. I roll classes based on early movement bonuses, leveling to mount levels is what helps keep me motivated.

In anycase you can rely on Blizzard to mix it up at any opportunity and I hear from SpoonCraft that racials are one of the things that will probably change come the next expansion.

…maaa run outa steam … off to forage for food.

Hmmm & I should learn to proof read before publishing and leaving the building eh …ahh well.

~ by Lactic Acid on September 7, 2008.