Horde Stereotypes: Are They Really True?

I’m one of those rare people that plays both factions in World of Warcraft. Back in Wrath of the Lich King, I mainly played Horde. Since Cata’s come around, I’ve switched to focusing on Alliance–in large part because I have a nice guild over there–but I still play my Horde toons regularly, and I still enjoy the Horde’s more colourful nature.

I never liked the faction rivalry in the game, and it especially bugs me when people actually buy into it and legitimately hate the other side. It’s just a game, dude! It always amuses how each side claims the other is made up of children and immature idiots. It’s just ridiculous that an aesthetic decision based on personal taste would dictate the maturity level of players. Right?

Lately, even though I still find it an absurd idea, I’m starting to wonder if the Alliance might not be right after all. I’ve had nothing but bad luck with people on the Horde side.

I’m a guild-jumper. My first Horde guild was nice, but it was essentially three people–including myself. I eventually left in the hopes of finding a larger guild. The first one I got into was, simply put, disgusting. The guild channel made the Trade chat anal [Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker] spam look highbrow by comparison. Furthermore, despite their billing themselves as casual, some of them were surprisingly elitist and would absolutely eviscerate you if you failed to live up to their high standards.

I wound up ragequitting that guild.

My Horde characters are currently split between two guilds, and I suspect I will eventually quit them. In both cases, the litmus test came when I mentioned my Alliance characters. In one case, someone mentioned he would “rather be dead than [slur for a homosexual] Alliance.” In the other, when I mentioned that half my Alliance guild is female, someone wondered how they had found their way out of the kitchen. Face, meet my good friend, palm.

I’m only staying in the first guild for its high level perks, and in the other because I’ve only been a member for a few days and I’m hoping they’re better than they seem (somehow I doubt it). I’m about ready to give up on guilds altogether on that faction, honestly.

And it’s not just my own guilds. The other day, I joined a Firelands trash run on my Blood Elf mage with a group that was mostly made up of one guild. Now, to amuse my nerdly heart, I created a few macros that make my mage /say incantations in Thalassian when he uses his cooldowns. For some reason, the group took offense to this and began yelling at me halfway through the run, telling me to shut up and pelting me with homophobic slurs.

And for the record, it’s not as if I was filling the chat log and interfering with raid communication. They weren’t even using chat–except to harass me. I think they must have been talking in their guild channel or Vent.

If they’d been polite about it or given a good reason, I’d have shut off the macros happily. But I will not “stfu.”

This run honestly damaged my faith in the human race. To see so much bile and hatred spewed towards someone because they occasionally use fantasy words in a fantasy game… It boggles the mind.

It doesn’t so much offend me that they insulted me. It offends me that such small-minded, hateful people exist in the first place.

And to cap it all off, my random Horde dungeon groups as of late have been filled with sniping, insults, and people treating each other horribly.

I can’t help but contrast this with my experiences on the Alliance side, where my Dungeon Finder groups are polite and pleasant more often than not, where I have a kind and supportive guild that doesn’t feel like it’s made up of disturbed 15 year-olds. That’s not to say I don’t encounter immature and occasionally disgusting people on the Alliance side, but it doesn’t seem to happen as often as on the Horde side–despite the fact that the Alliance vastly outnumbers the Horde on my server.

I still find it hard to believe one’s maturity and one’s choice of faction might be linked, but it’s hard to ignore the (circumstantial but strong) evidence before my eyes.

What do you think? Is the Horde really less mature? Or am I just spectacularly unlucky? If you have any tales of Horde people behaving like, well, people, please share them in the comments. I would love to have my faith in my Horde brethren restored.

4.3 News:

The wait is over. Blizzard has begun releasing news on World of Warcraft’s patch 4.3 to the slavering nerd masses, and boy, is there some big stuff here.

Ah dun been transmogrified:

Perhaps the biggest piece of news is the revelation of what that mysteriously leaked picture was. It is… exactly what we all thought it would be. Transmogrification is a new service that will allow players to make any piece of gear they have look like any other piece of gear they have–within certain limitations. The source item for transmogrification must be the same armor/weapon type as the item it is modifying, so no DKs in sundresses or mages dual wielding Ashkandi. The exceptions are guns, bows, and crossbows, which will all be interchangeable with each other. Also, disappointingly, you will not be able to transmogrify non-legendary weapons to look like legendaries, a decision which has crushed Illidan fanboys everywhere.

This decision has been met with an overwhelming amount of positive feedback. If you go to WoW’s official forum, a place normally reserved for endless whining and flame wars, the joy is palpable. In all honesty, I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

For myself, I initially thought this idea was somewhat of a waste of time, but the more I think about it, the more I like it. My rogue can go back to her beloved VanCleef’s Battlegear and Liar’s Tongue, and my pally can be stylin’ with Lucky Old Sun and the Royal Crest of Lordaeron, though I will probably go with Quickening Blade of the Prince for my tank set. I am so glad I’m in the habit of hoarding old gear.

That said, it is a little disappointing to see weapons so restricted. I never really met a dagger I liked, and I’d prefer to make my rogue’s offhand weapon into a sword, axe, or fist weapon.

Stare into the void:

Another new feature for patch 4.3 closely related to transmogrification is the addition of void storage, an expanded bank that allows one to store large amounts of old gear and items–with a hefty gold fee attached to depositing and withdrawing gear.

This won’t affect nearly as many people as transmogrification, but it’s a nice feature for chronic packrats, and it does give us a place to put all our gear for transmogrification. Hopefully we won’t have to pay the withdrawal fee every time we want to use a piece of gear for transmogrification; otherwise, it could get quite irritating.

Death to Deathwing:

4.3 will also include a new raid tier, which will theoretically include the final battle with Deathwing. If true, this means that either Cataclysm is coming to an end much sooner than anyone outside of Blizzard could have anticipated, or that Deathwing will not be the expansion’s ultimate boss. They did something similar to this by letting people fight Illidan early in Burning Crusade, but if memory serves, even Blizzard admitted that was a poor decision, so it’s hard to see them doing it again.

It is worth noting that Blizzard has not categorically stated this is the patch in which we will kill Deathwing, though it is strongly implied by their wording. Personally, I wouldn’t be shocked if this turned to not be the patch where the fallen Earthwarder meets his end, but only time will tell.

4.3 is also confirmed to feature no less than three new five man dungeons. Dungeons are tied with quests for my favourite part of this game, so I’m very excited about this, especially since some are saying they will be the War of the Ancients Caverns of Time instance we’ve been hearing about since before Cataclysm’s launch.

WotA was originally slated to be a raid, but it may have been downgraded. This might disappoint some, but as a lore fan who doesn’t get to raid much, I jump for joy at the prospect.

Although come 4.3, raid accessibility may not be so much of a problem…

The Raid Finder:

The one final big piece of news to come out of 4.3 is the addition of a Raid Finder tool which will theoretically function much like the current Dungeon Finder tool. Little is known about the specifics of this feature at present, but it could change the game immeasurably.

In the past, I’ve tended to view a Raid Finder as a wonderful idea that would never work. My biggest complaint about WoW is and always has been that raids are too hard to access for the casual player.

I used to feel the same about dungeons, but the Dungeon Finder changed all that. I don’t care how much people hate on it, the DF revolutionized the game for the better for me. Dungeons went from a chore rarely embarked upon to one of my favourite parts of the game. I would have quit long ago if not for it.

But raids are a different beast from dungeons. They’re much harder and more complicated, and I always thought a Raid Finder would end in disaster. But lately, I’m not so sure. A lot of fans have come up with very good ideas for how to solve the potential problems of a Raid Finder–for example, have people queue for specific bosses instead of whole raids, allowing for raid compositions tailored to that specific boss.

Furthermore, I’m starting to wonder if dungeons and raids are really that different anymore. Dungeon fights are getting ever more complex and unforgiving, especially in the Troll dungeons of 4.1.

I honestly think Jin’do the PUGbreaker and High Priest Venoxis are as hard as many raid fights, and I might even go so far as to say that they might be harder than some of them–I’ve seen a lot more PUGs wipe on Jin’do than the faceroll that is post-4.2 Halfus Wyrmbreaker. Many groups suffered horribly on these bosses for weeks, but experience and gear levels have gone up, and now I can’t remember the last wipe I had on either of them. The Dungeon Finder community rose to the challenge, and I can’t help but wonder if the same thing might not happen with a Raid Finder–it’s a horror show at first, but eventually, people learn the fights and begin to waltz through them.

In fact, if I might put on my tinfoil hat for a moment, I can’t help but wonder if Jin’do was a test to see if random PUGs could handle the challenges a Raid Finder would throw at them.

Again, only time will tell, but I’m cautiously optimistic about this Raid Finder.

Sources:

4.3: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2973396284

Transmogrification: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3309048#blog

Void storage: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3342240