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!
Click to read more ...
iTZKooPA on