Project Lore

So far on Project Lore, all of our episodes have featured the team playing as Alliance characters. That is about to change. This week we have a special treat for you. The guys are logging onto their alts to run through an instance from the other side, and it's one that only horde characters are likely to see at the appropriate level. Of course, the instance in question is Ragefire Chasm, located in the middle of Orgrimmar. Each day this week we'll show you how the guys fare inside, so tune in! Here's the full schedule: Project Lore Horde RFC 1.1 - Monday, February 2 at Noon PST Project Lore Horde RFC 1.2 - Tuesday, February 3 at Noon PST Project Lore Horde RFC 1.3 - Wednesday, February 4 at Noon PST Project Lore Horde RFC 1.4 - Thursday, February 5 at Noon PST Project Lore Horde RFC 1.5 - Friday, February 6 at Noon PST Weekly Wrap Up 2/7/09 - Saturday, February 7 at Noon PST Take a look at our subscribe page to find us all over the web, and use the Episodes RSS feed or follow our Twitter to find out when new episodes are out! Project Lore is also on MySpace and Facebook, so please be our friend!

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Also didn't expect a nose ring.

When I introduced my girlfriend to the classes of WoW, I had two guesses in the back of my mind, a druid or a hunter.  This may seem stereotypical of me (sorry to the bra burners out there, but it seems that many women like playing a nurturing role even in their high fantasy), but my assumption was based on my girlfriend. Although, the statistics did play a part.  I have known a few locks played by women, but the whole aligning with dark magic and demons just doesn't fit her. Despite the high probability of Lesley selecting a hunter, I honestly thought she would go with a druid.  This guess was based more on the knowing her part and less on the numbers and graphs I love so much.  She is a rather earthy person, doing her best to be one of Al Gore's minions, giving to Goodwill, hiking around the planet and things of that nature.  The keyword there is nature, she loves it.  Perhaps it was the "primal connection to the beasts of Azeroth" that drew her to the fold of ranged DPSers.  Now that I have dwelt on this further, I should have had a Shaman in the running. Race selection was a little less straight forward.  At first she was leaning towards rolling a Tauren rather than the short and stocky Dwarves.  Apparently the switch was influenced by me a bit.  My description of the Alliance versus the Horde possibly labeled one side as the "bad" guys and the other as "good" guys, although that was not my intent by any means.  In lieu of describing the factions at all, I should have just pointed her to Blizzard's description on Horde versus Alliance and the races.  That would have rendered any subconscious feelings I have about the "misunderstood" Horde moot. A little personal history, I wanted to roll Horde from the start, but all of my friends went Alliance...After being forced into my faction choice, I was then forced into my racial selection by my ex-girlfriend.  I had basically no choice when I entered WoW. T_T.  Lesley's perception of the Horde may have been swayed a bit, but I had little to do with her selection of a stocky female as her avatar! I am a bit baffled as to why she settled on a Dwarf, or even the Tauren for that matter.  She has had little experience with high fantasy (or, and possibly more accurately, never really cared for it) as evidenced by not knowing what an Orc (or Ork) was.  In conjunction with that, aside from viewing SolidSamm in action, Lesley knows nothing about Warcraft either. Despite my best efforts, there is a slim chance that I ruled out her playing a human.  When we first started discussing the whole prospect weeks ago, I mentioned how unimaginative selecting a Human as a race was to me.  Who knows if she took it to heart, or even remembered it though.  Night Elves, Gnomes and Dwarves may have been all that was open to her.  Draenei you say?  Space goats may have gotten ruled out for being such an oddity until Ms. iTZKooPA becomes more familiar with the universe and its lore.  Perhaps as an alt if we get that far. For reasons unknown to me, it ended up being a stout, female Dwarf hunter.  I highly doubt she looked over and analyzed the racial traits and figured that a Dwarven Hunter would get a small bonus.  I would love to be surprised by such a fact though! The whole process took more than an hour to complete, and at that point we packed it in and called it a night.  Lilyterran, the fierce dwarven hunter with generations of training, has yet to encounter a single quest, or even load the opening cinematic.  Now to walk the fine line of helping while not hand-holding...A battle for another day. Oh, and I forgot to sign her up via Recruit-a-Friend.  What an idiot I am!  Think Blizzard will let me beg my way into it?  And thanks for the tips, keep em coming!

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Now with presents actually under the Winter Veil Trees in Ironforge and Orgrimmar, all of us in Azeroth have a bunch of ways to show off our holiday cheer. Blizzard has put in a lot of great ways for players to interact with each other - we can sprinkle handfuls of snowflakes on people, kiss under the mistletoe, have snowball fights, play with our new racecars, build a snowman, bake cookies for our friends, or do all of the above and show off our new Merrymaker titles. I've always been a proponent of using the in game mechanics as a jumping off point for having fun with other players, which is why what happened a few days ago in Dalaran really amused me. A couple of days back I was hoping for a heroic group to form or I don't know what else, but I was wandering around Dalaran as usual. I saw a horde character named Byerly walking around, and I mean press the slash button on your keypad walking, on his reindeer mount. It was interesting to me, and the walk/run toggle button is one of my favorites for horsing around during downtime. Anyway, I hopped on my mount and used some fresh holly to transform it into a reindeer and joined him in his slow march around the main portion of Dalaran. More players were intrigued and joined in on their reindeer, and eventually we had a mixture of about ten horde and alliance marching around Dalaran at a slow pace spreading holiday cheer... or at least having a good time. It was hilarious watching the slow line of riders. I got a couple of screen shots but only the above one turned out any good. It was nice to see that some horde can have fun with the alliance at least during the holiday season. Have you guys seen any interesting ways that players have been celebrating the holidays? Or what about gifts, did you get anything good this year?

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World of Warcraft may have over 11 million players, but that doesn't mean it is easy to get together. One of the most annoying things about World of Warcraft is the amount of realms the game has, causing the 11 million plus players to be fragmented all over the place. Unless you specifically rolled on the same server as a friend, it is highly unlikely that you will be able to play together, without making another character.  I understand why they do this, but I guess I want a little Eve Online in my WoW.

I have been talking about the game while walking down the street only to be interrupted by “are you talking about WoW?!” Being the brazen nerd that I am, I opening admit my affection for the game to the complete stranger and ask them what server they are one. The response always ends up being anything but Magtheridon. However, this weekend, I got to spend some time with a Mag player, and two other players from my Battlegroup. The horde player, I knew by reputation before meeting him in person. The other two are friends from back home, who are both Alliance, rolled in my Battlegroup by sheer chance. This is something that I have never come across before.

Needless to say, shenanigans ensued. We quickly plotted a coup against a 5-man instancing group of the horde. The idea was to get a bunch of rogues, druids, shadowmelders and anyone willing to blow an invisibility potion to group up outside a level 80 instance. Our double agent hordie would then summon his group and BAM, we'd all pop into action, laying waste to players several levels higher than us, while having a good laugh.

With the other members of the LAN on a different server, they weren't too interested, and the plot never materialized. My hordie friend did manage to train some guards on me after I applied a Deadly Poison to him by accident though.  Thanks for that.  However, we did play hours upon hours of Left 4 Dead. That is a Co-op LAN game to die for (excuse the horrible pun).

While I am sad the weekend is now over, I finally managed to catch up on my sleep from the hardcore gaming sessions, hence the coherent article. Anyone else have some good LAN stories or carebear soliloquies?

This weekend made me realize something, I guess not all horde are bad...

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As we all wait for Wrath of the Lich King, I've been doing a lot of achievement grinding. It gives me something to do other than leveling alts, and I finally got my Loremaster of Kalimdor achievement the other day. In order to complete it, I ended up having to do a few raid quests along with some rarely done quests in Silithus. I also had to nearly complete the Raene's Cleansing quest line in Ashenvale, which provided me with the awesome Rod of Transformation to turn me into a furblog. Luckily, I was able to stop at the final step and keep the rod, allowing me to transform into a furblog whenever I please. While grinding out the quests for this achievement, I've of course run accross a few low level horde who I would sometimes leave alone, but sometimes I would just have to one shot them. There's just something fun about running by, tossing an Earth Shock and maybe a Stormstrike, killing a player without breaking stride. If they're in my way again, they'll probably be scared that I might do it again. Hopefully that stops them from stealing my quest objectives. Now, Bastosa has wondered about the joy of ganking, and doesn't see the fun in killing low level members of the enemy faction, but I do. Part of it is revenge. I can't count the number of times I've been killed by horde because I was not on an even playing field with them. Either I'm half dead from killing mobs or 10 levels lower than the enemy, and I find myself dead. Of course, I won't waste my time camping some level 30 undead warlock, but if I happen to see one, I will usually kill them. If I happen to see them again, I may kill them again. If you're on a PvP server, that's what you can expect. I'm not out to ruin anybody's night, but to give you the experience of a PvP server. I dealt with it, so you can deal with it. While I won't just camp anybody unless they've done something to deserve it, such as corpse camping me, I can think of a few easy solutions. Here are a few of the things I like to do if I get camped. Get your friends. Especially during early WotLK leveling, lots of your friends will likely be in the area and willing to help. While you're at it, group up and blast through some quests together. A group is much less likely to get ganked than a lonely player. Go somewhere else. You can usually find another place to level. There are a lot of areas and subzones and more quests than you'd ever need to level. Move on to the next area and come back later. Log on an alt (or a main). Grab your other characters and get some work done on them. Or, if you're leveling an alt, take your main and do some dailies. Maybe play the Auction House game for a while. You probably won't get killed in the AH unless there's some sort of plague going around. Take a break. Make a sandwich, grab a drink, or get some errands done. While you're out getting things done, your campers are waiting for you to come back with no idea that you've logged out, balanced your checkbook, and beaten Little Big Planet. What are all of your strategies for avoiding gankers? Are you looking forward to ganking in Northrend? How often do you kill the lowbies that happen to be in your way?

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How many times have you found out that someone you know plays World of Warcraft? You are enjoy their company and don't really have any connections to your current server, other than your high level character. So, wondering if a transfer is possible, you ask the standard questions: "Horde or Alliance?" and "PvE or PvP?" One of those questions can now be eliminated, as Blizzard has the following update on the main World of Warcraft site:

Providing a smooth and enjoyable experience for all players is always a priority for us, and we are continually re-evaluating our policies and programs to do so. As the state of the game has matured substantially since the inception of Paid Character Transfers, we will now be allowing PvE-to-PvP transfers on a full-time basis to provide players with more mobility and freedom to easily play with their friends.

This is exciting news, though some are sure to be upset that it is possible to level on a carebear server and transfer to a PvP server, avoiding the constant ganking while leveling, then being able to gank once said leveling is complete. Personally, I am happy that more friends will be able to play together without investing the rather large time investment to level one more character. How do you guys feel?

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So I play an Alliance toon on Frostmane. I also play several other toons on a few servers, all Alliance. I enjoy playing humans for the most part, probably as an extension of familiar escapism, being as I am currently a human in RL. lol. But I don't hate on those who choose to play the Horde. I may hate on the Horde, and at most opportunities on the PvP servers, I will choose my battles with them wisely, but I really don't hate the RL person who plays it. I figure that's their choice. Like they say, don't hate the player, hate the game. The Horde races, and my perception of the lore of the Horde, never really appealed to me. I dabbled playing an undead lock for a few levels and a BE Pali but it just didn't feel right to me. It's just not my thing. So I ask you, all of you Horde players, why? Why do you play a Horde character? What is the allure of being an Orc or Troll or Blood Elf? Okay maybe a Blood Elf for the /dance... seriously... the BE dudes dance like Napoleon Dynamite and the Female BE dance like Britney Spears her video Toxic video - very funny. I'm seriously not h8in here. I just want to know your thoughts: what are your reasons for playing Horde? I'm just curious. Thanks

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