Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Alliance + Horde = true?

You that are following the adventures of Larísa know by now that I am not and will hardly ever become a dedicated PvP player. It's probably this fact - in combination with me being kind and goodhearted, maybe even wimpy - that makes me never being able to engage into the so called conflict between Alliance and Horde. There are a lot of things in the game that I can identify with when I'm in the right mood. Larísa is more to me than just a couple of pixels, I enjoy her company a lot and I put my heart into her destiny in quite a childish way. But this hate-the-horde-thing that some alliance players devote their selves to is beyond my understanding.

To me a horde character is just a guy that looks a bit different to the toons that Larísa normally is playing with. A bit uglier or cooler, that is a matter of taste. Above all: behind every figure there's a player, a person that unfortunately I can't connect with, with less than being smart and stubborn to get over the obstacles for communication that Blizzard has put between us.

But of course you can do it if you just try hard enough. /hug has described that in a nice blog post, that inspired me to the drivel of today. I'll never forget how I myself once tried to get over the language barrier in Un'goro Crater, where I was questing around at the time being. I had got stuck on a quest, requiring me to take down some flying dinosaurs, being read-orange to me and a little to big a challenge to me. Then I ran into a troll rogue, a couple of levels above me, in the middle of some skin grinding. I helped him to kill some attacking mob and after that something that looked like a little dance followed, where we took turns performing expressions of politeness and friendship, everything we could to make contact. One way or another an idea flew into my mind, that he might help me with the dinos. Perhaps there was a way to make him understand... I ran around making all sorts of gestures, moving restlessly in different directions, until I suddenly vanished without a trace. In stead I got a whisper from an unknown low level gnome far away in Ironforge. Yes, it was my new horde friend that said that I seemed to be in need of some help and asked me how he could be to my service. I explained, he logged back to the troll and in a minute I had completed the quest and got myself a new friend as well.

As a matter of fact, we kept in contact for a long while, trying to make efforts to create characters on each of our sides, hoping that we one day would be able to play together. But neither of us had the patience to start all over again on the other side, both of us appreciated our mains and present guild too much to be willing to give it up. My little bloodelf never levelled above ten and his warlock human got stock on level 40. We were doomed to live on different sides of the game.

That was annoying at the time, it still is, and it makes me a bit sad when I think about it. During the years there must be more players than me who like Romeo and Juliet have turned up on different sides, when they like each other and would prefer playing together. Just think about it, shouldn't it be possible to - maybe at a skyrocketing price - be possible to change side of the char you have put endlessly much of effort into levelling up? Or couldn't they let us create mixed parties and guilds, with both hordes and alliances? If you worry about the lore it should be possible to invent some kind of peace keeping forces just like FN? Dreams, dreams... But I suspect that the problem is at another level - it's about the logic of the game - probably it just isn't doable without a huge effort from Blizzard. So for the time being we'll just have to accept the fact - there is no Utopia, where everybody loves each other - not in RL, nor in Azeroth.

And who knows, maybe I'll discover the charm of PvP one day. If I'll just run a sufficient amount of BGs, being assaulted by evil sneaking rogues or relentlessly ganked whenever I ress and the graveyard - I guess at last the moment will come when even I get sick of being kind and cute, and bloodthirstily starts mangling down orcs and undead with a wicked smile on my face. But that day is still pretty far away.

Once a carebear - always a carebear.

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