Note: Spoilers for the new Thrall quests
Note: I have some very good friends who play Horde. This isn’t directed at all Horde, just the ones making my life miserable and the ones who apparently work at Blizzard.
Note: This is going to get whiny.
I hopped online last night on Analogue and headed for Hyjal, looking to start the dailies quest chain. I hadn’t really read much about the quests so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I checked the Heroes’ Call board and then, over at the portals, I found another quest. Someone wanted me to help out Thrall. Sigh. Ok sure, whatever.
Don’t get me wrong, he’s definitely a cool character – but I don’t like Thrall and I really don’t like the idea of him being the big “neutral” character this time around. Maybe it’s racism to prefer Tirion Fordring, but I felt like that paladin put his money where his mouth was. He basically went into exile for trying to promote understanding between Horde and Alliance. He has the cred to stand there and say “this is bigger than both of us.”
Thrall… did what, exactly? I don’t roleplay but my main IS a night elf druid and I can’t help but notice Thrall doing exactly nothing to prevent the devastation of the woodlands of Kalimdor, and that’s even before Catacylsm. As warchief, he talked a good game about unity and all. But his actions were…. rather mediocre. I never got the sense that peace meant much more to him than a way to chat up Jaina Proudmore. His idea of interspecies relations seemed about the same level.
Anyway. So no, so far this expansion having Thrall as the hero wasn’t my cup of tea. And his girlfriend Agra kind of pisses me off. At least they gave her a new voice. For a while there I thought maybe Thrall wasn’t into women, because his girlfriend sounded like a guy.
But there we are in Hyjal to repair the world tree. We’ve got druids and shaman, representatives of night elves and tauren. Cool. We’ve even got ol’ snappy dresser himself, Malfurion, and – ok, Twilight Cultists, kind of saw that coming. And now they’re threatening Thrall because he’s the chosen one or some such and poof, he’s gone. Everyone gives up on him pretty fast except his girlfriend and she’s pretty desperate. I guess I can help her out. So we’re off to Uldum to talk to wind spirits.
The wind platform was where I first realized what a mess this might be. There’s dozens of air elementals spawning and dying, and dozens of players killing them. Horde and Alliance. It’s a PVE server, so why are most of the Horde flagged? People are complaining in general chat about the Horde ganking them and I figure out pretty quickly that there’s a pack of griefers here. They’re waiting for someone to accidentally use an AOE, or tab target a flagged Hordie, and get flagged themselves.
Ok, I’m a boomkin right now anyway. Single target it is. I very carefully start killing stuff and make it all the way through without flagging.
For the earth and water parts, I work equally carefully. At the water place the only time I have trouble is when I’m trying to interact with Aggravating, mostly it’s fine. The earth spot is the same story as the winds place – and as I kill my last elemental, I tab too fast and moonfire a tauren druid. Crap. I quickly shapeshift to bird form and go wait out my debuff.
Then…. to the Firelands. And this is a nightmare. It’s more crowded than the other place, with mobs that have to be killed in the right place at the right time and a squad of ten horde just making life tricky. Inevitably I tab-target something, and bang, I’m dead. And then I realize the worst part. Why it is the gankers are hanging out. The quest progress gets reset when you die. I just wasted ten minutes.
Sigh. I wait very carefully, shadowmelded in a corner, til the debuff goes away. I come back and I do it right.
Save Thrall, blah blah blah story, blah blah, hey that’s a nice cape even if it doesn’t have spirit! Cool! Back to Hyjal to do the other stuff, the ones that will open dailies.
See, what annoys me about getting ganked was twofold. First, Blizzard had to know this would happen. It would have been insanely easy to prevent it; just make Aggra radiate “Sanctuary” to an area whatever size it needed to be around her. We’ve seen NPCs for epic quest chains before that radiate auras of infinite health or total pacification or whatever; she could have made it impossible to attack the other faction.
Second…. to the Hordies out ganking…. I was trying to help your freakin’ war chief and that’s the thanks I get? Your priorities sure are screwed up.
Again. Whiny post. Not directed at people who play Horde and aren’t jerks and I’m sure you met Alliance jerks doing these quests on your servers. Idiots are idiots. It just annoys me that Blizzard wouldn’t put in rudimentary safeguards. I don’t mind pvp, even world pvp, but gank fests are not fun.
And again. Thrall is utterly uninspiring as a save the world person, to me. I get that some people at Blizzard think he’s the Second Coming. On toast. And want his babies. I’m fine with that. But seriously, if you want him to have some appeal to us…. have him do some reaching out to the Alliance. Send him to Hellscream and tell that boy to see reason, or something. Because right now it feels like the Alliance is bending over backwards to try to face the threats to our world together with the Horde – and we’re getting screwed.
Tirion! ❤
I didn't have time to check out the quests last night, between playing the AH and raiding. I think I'm glad I didn't. I can only imagine what that questline must be like on the actual PvP server. I suppose I should at least open up the dailies part tonight though, now that I'm a day behind. Fayle didn't do them either though, so I figure I can slide. 😛
I totally agree on the Thrall quest. It would have been soooo nice to have Sanctuary up during it. I think i ended up failing it 4-5 times on my shammy last night. /sigh. And the worst part is that its a pvp server i play on… Kill the elementals, all while they beat on you. Get to around 50% health.. and some stupid rogue or kitty comes and stun locks you.. and dead… WHAT!? Gotta redo the quest! WTFBBQ!
Well, my take on this is to simply don’t even start thrall’s quest. It was enough that we were forced to help him at Deepholme, I sure as hell won’t bother with him now when it’s avoidable.
After all my war bear is for killing him, not Garrosh 😉
Yeah, I have a lot of characters that could use that cape but I can’t imagine listening to Aggro whining about Thrall’s innermost desires for another… 2 hours * how many… way too long…
Got it, avoid Hyjal area for at least 1 month. I can do that!
The Hyjal quests aren’t the problem quests. In fact they are targeted towards solo players. So you will want to avoid the Thrall quest.
TBH, I would prefer if 1) PVP debuff faded immediately upon death or 2) you could disable PVP completely for yourself. Joining a PVE server wasn’t a “hmm, I don’t know where to go” decision for me – I specifically wanted to avoid PKers (pardon the D2 terminology – gankers, griefers, whatever the current slang is). I don’t want to even have the option to aggro them – or at least, I want to have the option to not aggro them – until such a time as I sign up for a random battleground or Tol Barad. If I wanted the PVP experience unfettered, I would have gone to a PVP server.
But yeah, lack of sanctuary blows – and I didn’t even take into account how getting ganked by Horde while trying to save their faction leader is moronic.
On Drak there are a few guys Alliance side who are multiboxers. There is one guy who has at least 9 other accounts the other 2 have 3-5. They usually harass players in TB. From what I was hearing last night, the multiboxers were griefing everyone on the Thrall quest.
I think I am just going to wait to do that quest when it is no longer peak times.
Ana, have you read any of the books or researched any of the lore on Thrall?
I don’t read the books but I have read all the lore. It’s pretty cool lore, honestly, but as a wannabe writer myself I recognize the character archetype. It’s not one that works for me. And honestly the in game character development of Thrall is very much a case of “special pleading”. We’re told he’s a peacemaker, but if we’re being honest, Varian Wrynn has done at least as much for the cause of peace and he gets no credit because he’s bad tempered.
The only person in Azeroth who really truly is working hard for peace all the time is Jaina. And I wouldn’t bet that it’s peace and not “piece” that she’s after, if you know what I mean.
LOL! And you guys claim you are PG-13! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Reversion has been out of town since Saturday…. I won’t say that my mind’s in the gutter because of that but….
Well you can always join in on our vent during the raid ^_^
Also, Tirion and Thrall are okay. But only Jaina could put the Lich King in an Ice Block. 😉
And go all emo and whine and cry at the same time!
I would always scream at her, “Woman get over it!” in Halls of Reflection. Good times.
That was of course right before I’d target her and /makeout
Damn, I wish that emote was real.
I could have so much fun with that emote. Of course, no one would ever want to group with me again. ^.^
I guess I’ll start off with the sympathetic note. I’m sorry you had such a bad experience with the PVP flagging. I nearly accidentally flagged myself hitting a nelf kitty druid who seemed to be following me around for that purpose. It sucks that people try to grief our quest experiences that way.
Now for the part where I disagree with you.
I totally understand what you’re saying with regard to not caring about your lore characters – because most of Wrath felt like that to the Horde.
“Wait, who’s this Bolvar guy again? He’s the former Regent of Stormwind, still a soldier of the Alliance, and we’re just standing by as Tirion gives him absolute power over the Scourge?! Whaaaaat?!”
It just… feels a little privileged is all, you complaining that one (admittedly long) questline had no lore for you and you have no reason to like the character, when we’re coming off two expansions in a row in which the only major faction-neutral Horde presence (the only Horde NPCs the Alliance had to see and not kill) were Blood Elf Light-worshippers – the least objectionable kind of Horde, in that they follow the fantasy counterpart of Christianity, and look like a slight variation of human.
Don’t even get me started on how a patch focused around an Element and its Elementals is now Nelf-themed because Ragnaros coincidentally decided to start his invasion in the middle of Druidtown. Oh well, at least we get to see Hamuul, the only Horde druid with any lore or game presence, actually do something besides sit in Thunder Bluff for once… SPOILER ALERT oh wait he gets killed off.
So please forgive me if my response to your irritation at having to deal with a bit of Horde lore to get your 365 cloak is “it’s about time.”
Interesting perspective. From an Alliance point of view, Bolvar taking up the Lich King bit was just another example of how our side has to be the grownups and take all the sucky jobs to keep the world together.
What about Koltira Deathwhatever and the rest of the Ebon Blade? Pretty sure I remember some of them being Horde types.
And I think druids and shaman get to share this expansion. Paladins and Death Knights more or less shared Wrath, it seems balanced to me that as the nature lovers, balance-respecting types we’d have to work together. I think Blizzard is making a serious mistake focusing on the Orcs and not the Tauren. Tauren have shown great ability to lay aside their personal desires and needs to work with their enemies, and in fact one of my quests yesterday had me help out a pair – a night elf and a tauren – that had apparently become fast friends and were working together.
I’m not sure you quite got my point with regard to Bolvar being the new Lich King. It’s not the fact that yet another major, powerful lore figure is Alliance-aligned/of an Alliance race – after all, Ner’zhul is still in there – but the fact that Blizzard didn’t even stop to think about how the Horde champions present would react. As far as they knew, Bolvar was an Alliance soldier and patriot, and there was no reason for our characters to believe he wouldn’t immediately turn the Scourge upon the Horde. I’m sure if a Horde character had gotten the crown instead that concern would at least have been addressed.
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The fact that the first Horde-race but not Alliance-killable lore character (excluding blood elf Light-worshippers) of all of Wrath and TBC that comes to mind is Koltira really only serves to reinforce my point. While he is a member of a Horde race (a blood elf, but not a Light-worshipper, so he doesn’t fit the exclusion) and does interact with Alliance characters, the extent of that interaction is 3 quests and 2 quest turn-ins, including the Death Knight starting area.
Yes, there are other Horde-race Death Knights, but for the most part they have no lore or character development, no lines, maybe a couple quests. The (formerly) Alliance Death Knight with the most lines in Wrath is Arthas, or Darion Mograine if it’s cheating to count the expansion boss. The (formerly?) Horde Death Knight with the most lines in Wrath is Croc Scourgebane.
There are plenty of interesting Horde characters on Horde quests and in Horde areas; my objection is that content developed for both factions to experience leaned so heavily towards Alliance NPCs, Alliance lore, and especially Alliance religion. Now this has gotten a lot better in Cataclysm – my argument is only that a small amount of turn-about, the quest chain about Thrall, is fair play.
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Oh yeah, I have no problem with the druids having a major part in Cataclysm. It totally makes sense that when Azeroth is threatened, the Cenarion Circle would do their best to protect it. What I have a problem with is the fact that they have such a major part in Firelands. So far I’ve seen innumerable druids, and exactly two shaman – Thrall and Aggra. They haven’t actually accomplished anything this patch, and don’t look like they’re going to, while the druids are actively invading the Firelands. That doesn’t make any sense to me.
Also, while I appreciate that the NPCs we run into do include a number of Tauren, I’m a little disheartened at not seeing Trolls or Worgen. I know that the Troll druids have, lorewise, been accepted into the Cenarion Circle – have the Worgen? – but in the course of the new patch phases and zone so far I’ve seen one Worgen, and zero Trolls.
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SPOILER ALERT – HYJAL DAILIES PHASE 1 TO PHASE 2 TRANSITION
I’m also angrier than I can reasonably communicate at Hamuul’s death, which I saw earlier today. He’s the friggin Archdruid of the Tauren, respected as an equal (in status if not in skill) by Malfurion, and a low-level Druid of the Flame rooted him and f***ing one-shot him while he pleaded for help. He deserved more respect from the writers than that. He was the spiritual leader of the Tauren and they killed him off like a redshirt, just to show that the situation was ttly srs yewgaiz. RAGE.
Waitwut? Hamuul gets killed? Awww man. 😦
Last i saw him, he was alive… A little char broiled, and just a little too well done, but alive.
This is happening on server Dalaran, except the roles are reversed: it’s the Alliance flagging and fishing for AOE or tab-target errors. Just goes to show that there is no correlation between faction and asshattery.
Yeah, like I said in my post, I’m sure both factions are doing this crap. It’s just that when it’s the horde ganking alliance, when we’re trying to save their hero, that feels wrong…
Hmm, that’s a good idea. But can you try it without starting a chain? 😉
And the stupid cape ranks below the one I already have… USELESS!!!
you’re assuming of course that horde care about the lore. horde have been neglected on that side for so long the general consensus is that lore is something you roll Alliance for. to be honest, the bit of lore thrown our way in cata felt cheap and nasty anyway.
oh and seriously blizz…. i can understand thrall giving up the warchief role…but why did you have to give him a giant beaded necklace? he’s starting to look like a drag queen
I always said this game is 50% killing things and 50% drag show.
Thrall’s mentor was actually Gouken
I still haven’t tried the Thrall quest, but I did do the handful of quests to open up the dailies … on the PvP server. People were being careful to *not* hit each other, even helping kill each other’s mobs without using AoE.
Everyone other than that dickhead Alliance multiboxer, that is. This dude had three sets out there … 5 shaman, 1 priest 4 DKs, and the group that ganked me which consisted of 1 priest, 1 warrior, and 3 huntards. Really takes balls to go around killing solo players with your own 5-man team (not).
sigh. Last night he got me again with yet *another* set while I was punting turtles… this one was five kitty druids. wtfbbq man?
We had the opposite problem on our PvE server. I play Horde and we were all complaining about the groups of flagged Allies griefing us. I was lucky because I was forewarned – I was asked to run a random the instant I logged on so I got to hear about everyone else being ganked by Allies before I headed over to do the quest. I very carefully chose my targets and didn’t get flagged a single time on my Druid.
Because I never got flagged I had no idea that being killed reset your quest chain progress. That’s really stupid and Blizz should have fixed that.
Actually, although we assumed that it was Allies ganking Horde on our server, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a little bit of both. I mean, after a while there were so many people from both factions flagged that I don’t think we could figure out who started it.
Seems like everyone missed your point and only focused on the faction names. The point was that Bliz should have seen this coming and made some areas safe. I don’t mind some ganking but griefing is a pain in the hind parts.\
And as for the stupid Thrall quests… I don’t like Thrall. He is BORING. And they are trying to spice him up by… making him MORE boring.
BLIZ: Oh he was too much the perfect leader we should make him have…. WORRIES… yeah and like emotions and stuff. Normal boring ones like angst over leadership or wanting to have a normal life and stuff…. yeah because all that will make him SO interesting.
No that is not freaking interesting!!! That is boring and predictable. And they expected it to be touching or something? HAH!
And Agra… ug. LAME!
Seriously, this is my summary of the entire quest line:
Agra: “Wait wait… you like me and want a family? Well $%&@! That is what I have been doing wrong! Fine, let’s get hitched.”