Back to the Future, or Alliance, For a While!

Not permanently! I am still going to be playing mostly Horde in the future, but as I stated in my last blog post, I intend to have an Alliance main as well.

As such, I server and faction changed my 2nd 90 hunter, sending her over to Silvermoon and changing her from a Goblin to a Dwarf. I decided to go a bit different to my usual Nelfs and Draenei!

So here she is in her transmogged glory:

I have also decided to try and get my legendary cloak on her (though I wasn't as happy when I found out she was only on Chapter 1...).

So that's the plan to keep myself amused between now and WoD (or between now and getting Beta access!)

We shall see how long it lasts, but I would like to get this hunter as well geared a my main back on Draenor!

Reliving the Levelling Experience, With no boost to 90!

So as some of you may have seen on Twitter earlier this month, The Godmother proposed a challenge of sorts - level an alt from beginning to end, without using a character boost to 90, to relive the levelling and rediscover what it's all about.

It took me ages to decide whether I was even going to do it as I have way too many alts and half levelled characters as it is, but the mood has taken me to level another one so figured I may as well do this too!

Meet Alyxe:

She is a paladin, who shall be levelled as Prot. I haven't decided whether to stick mostly to questing or bash through some dungeons yet, but we shall see how it goes!

The Important Things in Life

A few things have happened in real life this weekend that have made me appreciate what, and who, I have.

You've heard me talk about my Nephew many times. On Saturday morning, we heard the sad news that his other Grandfather (his Mum's Father) had suddenly died from a heart attack. My Nephew's Mum and my brother and broken up (amicably) and she was due to be moving back in with her Father - much shock all round.

Due to this we had my Nephew all weekend as the last thing his Mum needed to worry about was a two year old running around.

Even though I didn't know her Dad very well, it was still a shock and made me want to re-establish my own relationships, both outside of the game and inside.

My very good friends Landerolin and Siorai have alt characters in my horde guild, and we spent the day yesterday levelling together, nattering on Vent (until I had to go afk to help with dinner).

Kudos for those of you who can tell where we are!

I also have applied and been accepted for one of my old Alliance alts back on SWC to rejoin The Wanderers, so I can re-establish old friendships there also. My shaman has started the levelling path between 85 and 90 (currently 86!) though she was very confused when visiting the inn at Dalaran:

Yep, someone had managed to get Gymer the Storm King up here and he is dead in Dalaran - at least it looks that way. I'm starting to think it may be a bug as the corpse has been there for a few days now (and I doubt someone is purposefully bringing a new one here every time it despawns!)

My druid is settling in well in Draenor, she has a nice new transmog also!

Her gear is also coming along nicely, she has gone from ilvl 494 on SWC to a current ilvl of 517! She's done a bit of Flex raiding and has started making her way through LFR, and is currently queued for ToES for the legendary part (tho I doubt I shall get all the way to the end of the legendary questline, already have umpteen characters at various parts of it.)

My gold making plans for the next expansion keep going awry as I keep spending the gold....

I needed a Traveller's Tundra Mammoth okay? Honest!

Happy 2014!

I have started as I have said I would - with cleaning my PC!

I'm yet to clean the d3esk around it as you can see by this pic, but the PC is running quieter and all should be well :)

Tis a monster of a PC but it has served me well ^^

I have also started yet another pair of RaF characters (that makes four pairs currently) but with the intention of speed levelling an Alliance Druid via Grant a Level, and seems as though I've partially done this already with an Alliance Hunter, I need to level another pair to get some more granted levels before the linked accounts expire!

I have also started levelling a char on Doomhammer with @MrandMrsWow's Guild The Tweeters! She's only level 20 odd at the moment, and as per usual I have gotten myself sidetracked, but I shall return there eventually!

I have also made myself a US account while everything was on sale, so if anyone has any server/guild recommendations send them my way!

An Alliance Itch

So the last few days I have come to the conclusion that I do not wish to do LFR on all my level 90s. And this has left me a little bored.

I have my nice new Draenei priest that I free character transferred from Draenor Horde to Emerald Dream then faction changed so she has been levelled from 83 to 85 and is working her way through Jade Forest now :)

Its been so long since I levelled an Alliance character of any description that it has made a nice refreshing change.

Here she is:

I've always liked Draenei females so am loving levelling her atm. She is still Holy mainspec and takes mobs down fairly quickly with the "DPS" Chakra.

I also finally gave in and made a Dwarf Hunter. Not only have I made a Dwarf Hunter, I have made her on a PvP server!

This may not bode well, but as she is still sub level 10, all is right with the world!

Not sure how long they will stick around, but it's nice looking back in on the Alliance questlines :)

That Escalated Quickly!

There seemed to be a mini-explosion in posts regarding the Alliance's role in Mists yesterday!

So firstly, thank you to all those that read mine and left me such nice comments and retweets, here have a dancing Moonkin Hatchling (awww look at the googly eyes!) :)

Seems that we have touched a nerve in a lot of the player base, whether they be Horde or Alliance!

It will be interesting to see which direction the story goes after the Siege of Orgrimmar to say the least! An idea did come up on Twitter courtesy of Marathal: 

I think this is a brilliant idea and would be an interesting story to participate in and play out, even if it runs the risk of having a similar consequence for the horde feeling sidelined.

I could see the story working though as I can picture Prince Anduin studying the dark forces to find out how to combat them and it going from there (yes, another corruption story).

In other news, the Closed Beta for Hearthstone has gone live in the US. I've not done a lot of reading up on this but it does look fun. Like many other people last night I spent quite a bit of time camped out on Twitter hoping for a Beta key even if I wouldn't be able to play quite yet. However it wasn't to be so fingers crossed for when it goes live in the EU ^^

In personal WoW news, the baby Warlock has reached Northrend! She looks forward to making the Lich King's forces cower before her. The baby Mage has progressed to Valley of Four Winds and is working her way through the quests quite nicely, and the newly transferred Hunter is gearing up nicely and can now get in to Mogu'shan Vaults!

The One Sided Story

Lot of folk on all kinds of media have been posting about this ever since the trailer for 5.4 hit the net.

While it looks epic and mind blowing, where is the Alliance representation in this? Just what will the Alliance get out of this at the end and why does it feel like Blizzard has forgotten that the game has a second faction, except as an after thought?

When Mists launched, I had one high level horde character that I had levelled solely so that I could experience the lore on the "other side".

Prior to that my entire gaming experience had been as a proud member of the Alliance, marching to Northrend with my fellows to defeat the Lich King and then uniting again to bring down the menace that was Deathwing (the only raids I actually did at the times they were relevant ^^).

I ran two accounts to enable me to have enough space for all the characters on the same server and in the same guild (I still do this!) and a major part of the joy of the game for me was the lore and the story lines you experience as a player. I have done my Loremaster achievement, I have done almost the entire Loremaster again on multiple characters to see the story and the "why" behind certain in game decisions.

Look back to the beginning of Mists, if you had told me then that I would be finishing the expansion only playing as Horde, I would have laughed at you! All my friends and guildies were (for the most part) Alliance, I was an Officer in my guild, we had been through many things together and that wasn't likely to change!

So I headed to Pandaria with my druid (my usual main, apart from raiding on my hunter), ate up all the quests (and I do mean all!) and reached level 90. I then cried at the amount of dailies I was faced with (because despite loving quests and storylines, I have always had a massive dislike of dailies and having to put myself into a routine of doing the same thing every day in game).But I worked through it as Alliance, got my self exalted with a few of the factions, and even found time to beat all the bosses in Mogu'shan Vaults on normal with the guild. The Will of the Emperor fight is still one of my favourites (for the pure reason that I could actually do "the dance"!).

It was on Alliance that I got most of my rep rewards and mounts, including my Yak!

I was a proud member of the Alliance (and particularly liked Night Elves!)

However, as the content moved on, and the guild started raiding Heart of Fear (which I quickly got bored of) I started being less impressed by the story line. I was looking for some more meaning in my game play and I wasn't finding it.

This is when I decided to dust off my horde Druid and see what the Horde storyline was like. 

I've spoken before about the guilds I've been in and why the Horde guild I'm in was as much a home as my old Alliance guild. So when they decided to change server in the hope of a better experience on a busier server, I sent my druid wit them, as I wouldn't have wanted to play on Horde alone.

Now, the experience of playing on a busy server compared to the low population of SWC played a large part in my decision to move, but I wonder if my Alliance characters had been on a busier server and able to participate more in the story (from a quality of life perspective - my horde characters can head to the Isle and always find groups for rares, Nalak etc. my Alliance characters have not been able to) whether it would have taken longer for me to switch my allegiance.

As it was, I switched and haven't looked back. I went back and did the opening quests of the Isle of Thunder on my druid to see how they were on Alliance and they felt thin and lacking.

However, I can go even further back and pinpoint the first time I was disappointed with the story the Alliance got (and even partially the Horde one as well!).

This was when we were asked to accept that Theramore was gone, with little more than a shoddy scenario to explain it. By shoddy, I don't mean the scenario itself, I quite like it as a stand alone scenario, just the story it was meant to convey and the meanings behind the actions were not explained well if at all. Luckily, I had actually read the book, and I understand that not all lore can be conveyed properly in game, but this was a major loss for Alliance, and all we got was a scenario and then asked to carry on as if nothing had happened. (Yes this is still a raw point with me, despite my switch in allegiances). I rarely criticise the decisions made for gameplay reasons and am quite happy to amble along and play whatever Blizzard throws at me but that was the start of the slippery slope I feel of why a lot of Alliance players are feeling disenfranchised.

As the expansion has progressed I've gotten to see a lot of brilliant story telling and scenarios to push things along. I understand that as it is the Horde leader that is the pivotal point of the the goings on that the story is going to be skewed towards the Horde playerbase.

I wouldn't have such a problem with this if there was a better interaction for Alliance players. Since opening up the Isle of Thunder quests I haven't logged back on Alliance because I know I will be disappointed in the storyline on that side.

The Alliance are lacking a reason for what they are doing. Their faction leaders seem to be M.I.A. and there is still a part of me wondering if the devs remember that the Alliance has more races than humans and dwarves.

As a member of the Horde, I understand exactly what has brought me to this point, I know who the faction leaders are, they all pretty much have had a hand in our story in Pandaria (except Sylvanas who is no where to be seen and Gallywix, who I don't think I've seen since the Goblin start area). The Alliance leaders are seen once or twice (with the exception of Mekkatorque, Greymane and Velen I think) but there's no substance to their stories.

Cause and effect has seemed non existent for Alliance players, lose a major Alliance port, Crown Prince grievously injured, doesn't matter. Prince is apparently OK. 

What reason have the Alliance been given for the collecting of supplies in the Barrens? We Horde are helping our Troll brothers and sisters. 

The Alliance will assist with removing Garrosh from Orgrimmar, but what do they actually get out of it?

As a Horde player, even I don't think that the satisfaction of "killing" the Horde leader will be sufficient and neither should Blizzard in my opinion. The Alliance should be able to get something tangible out of this, at the least some of the lands back that Garrosh took in Kalimdor (I feel that Sylvanas is too entrenched now to give back anything in Eastern Kingdoms!).

Here's hoping to a balancing patch after all this, and that the Alliance get something out of it and not just asked to forget. Again.