A Tale of Two Lame Races

Two new Expansion races means a whole lot of... new... uh.... racial abilities?

Way back when the new races were revealed in WoW, people got a little over excited at the prospect of playing a new race. People jumped on the Blizzard forums and tried their hardest to 'be the one' that coined the new nickname for the races... ZOMG Belves & Dranos LOL!

They would start these threads, and try to casually weave words like 'SpaceBerry' (I'm sadly not making that one up) into every other sentence, and just made the forums a chore to read. Okay, more of a chore.

A new class would have actually been something exciting, but everyone seems to be forgetting one thing: there's not really anything new about new races except graphics, and some lame racial abilities. You're still rolling a shaman or whatever, and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich tastes the same whether it comes wrapped in waxpaper or a Limited Edition 1989 Barbie 'COOL TIME' lunchpail.



So when is a mage not a mage? When it's a blood elf, and can:

Mana Tap!
Activate to drain 50 mana from your target and charge yourself with arcane energy
for 10 min. This effect stacks up to 3 times. 30 second cooldown. Scales with level.

or

Arcane Torrent!
Activate to silence all enemies within 8 yards for 2 seconds. In addition, you gain
20 Energy / 12 Mana for every charge of Mana Tap currently affecting you.
Scales with level.



I don't know what to say, since my primary class (warrior) relies on hitting things with swords to make them bleed and die. But wow... 50 mana? Hot damn! Is that how much it takes to cast Frostbolt XII? I hope so! What else do we have here, 2 seconds of silence? I'll admit to not being High Warlord material, but 2 seconds sounds like just enough time for me to have tried to cast something, have it not go, and figured I just hit the wrong button. Hit it again, oh there it goes, hooray!


Call me old fashioned, but last time I checked, I could break fear and EAT DEAD PEOPLE on my undead girl. Like... kill them, then hunch over their corpse and make lip-smacking noises while I watch my health go up. I can even use it in combat and eat someone's best friend that I just killed while Intimidating Shout is keeping them frozen in terror and making them WATCH. Christ, I should get an extra 2 seconds of stun if they knew that guy IRL.

The Draenei do have a kind of sweet heal over time:

Blessing of the Naaru
Activate to heal your target for 10 + 3 * level every 3 seconds for 15 seconds.
1.5 second cast time and 3 minute cooldown.
(At level 1 it heals 65 health, and heals 1100 at level 70)

Heroic Presence
Increases chance to hit of all party members within 30 yards by 1%.

... but it doesn't save them from just looking so chumpy that I want to break their knees. I think this was the intended effect; Blizz made sure they have like 4 major joints on each leg, allowing me plenty of time to make that special moment last.



Every idle animation, and things like /sit and /kneel just make them look like ... whatever. I just want to stab them, okay?

In fact, I wish both of the new races could have been Alliance. The Horde can wait until something good comes along, we don't want Pouty Pink Night Elves prancing around Ogrimmar, it kind of defeats the whole purpose of rolling horde in the first place. The boards are flooded with people trying to hold pseudo-intellectual contrasts between the races, but their posts invariably unravel until they just boil down to:



or even better:



Wow. As unsettling as it is that they find the new toons "attractive AND smart" (?), I've read that last sentence about three or four times, and I still don't quite get it. Is Tpringa suggesting that female blood elves have large penises under their dresses, so it's okay for transexuals to play as a ... or wait...I mean...? Wait, huh?


Now, in all fairness, I need to point out what could be viewed as a glaring hypocrisy... I myself am a guy, and have a female undead warrior named 'Isobelle' (which is also used as my account here as you can see). In my defense, though, I can honestly say I've never started a topic on any forums discussing how 'cute' or 'sexy' my avatar is, and I lead guild raids over vent in my sexy "i'm the man in charge voice" (Woahwoahwoah there...! Ease down, Slim! I never said I personally wasn't sexy; just that I don't look at my avatar like that). I don't pretend my mic doesn't work, or try to hide who I am.


Anyway. If all you're looking for is a shiny new brown-bag to cover up the bottle of swill that you consume in your spare time, then by all means, roll an expansion race. At this point, I'll probably keep what I have going, and leave it up to a guildie to roll that silly paladin we're going to want to be dragging on runs with us now. Maybe he can make it a 'cute and sexy' blood elf, and we can cyber during downtime between wipes... I'll administer some serious Blessing of the Naaru, seeing as how my Heroic Presence was just bostered by some hot tauren porn I downloaded by Arcane Torrent. Watch out baby! I'm gonna (Mana) TAP THAT ASS TONIGHT, YOW!


(okay, that was just silly)

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Expansion Blues

The Crusade is coming! The Crusade is coming! ...and 'end-game' raiding has become pointless.

As the expansion for WoW looms over the horizon, a few lucky individuals have managed to become involved in the beta test. I am one of those individuals, and I can say with utter confidence that your PH4T NAXX LOOTZ will amount to a steaming pile of nexus crystals come expansion. Don't even get excited about that either, because Nexus Crystals are so last month... the hot new enchants use Arcane Dust and Small Prismatic Shards.

Not in a Naxx guild? Never felt the hard floor of Nef's throneroom pressing up against your cold, dead cheek as you wait for a rez? Good news! Nobody will care, as none of that really even matters anymore!

The most important thing to have when the expansion comes out are going to be the numbers Six and Zero on your character screen. Anybody wearing garbage greens can join one of the five man groups and run it five or six times to completely replace all their gear. Here's a tip to get you started: When those Super Blue Pants of Ridiculous Stats and Sockets drop off that first boss, immediately link your Twill Pants of the Monkey in party chat, and click the little 'dice' icon. The guy wearing Legplates of Wrath will be hesitant to let his own silly pants go after he farmed Rag for 3 months hoping they'd drop. He doesn't want to 'upgrade' them off some silly boss that summons snake critters to defend himself (hint: critters don't aggro unless you attack them first!). He wants to be a macho warrior and swim naked to the bottom of a lake of lava, while whirlwinding thirty-seven elite alligators. THAT would make a worthy upgrade! He won't mind if you take those.



I mean, Look. The Wrath set still makes for a nice pair of pants, but the 3 sockets in those blue pants can go any direction... +DEF, +HIT (as i've done), +CRIT, +MANA/5sec... those green pants DROPPED OFF A FUCKING PIG, about 15 min after stepping through the dark portal. Would you rather kill a pig, or spend 3 months farming Ragnaros, God of Fire and Destroyer of 40-man Noob Raids, all while dealing with Endless Guild Bitching and DKP Drama? The blue ones dropped off some miniboss in a 5-man that makes Rend Blackhand in UBRS look like some kind of superhero. Imagine the fire guy in the beginning of UBRS, and you're on the right track.

Another Example: The Amulet of the Darkmoon.



People sequester themselves in their rooms for weeks on end farming 'Darkmoon Faire' mats to purchase tickets to redeem for 'fortunes', epic trinkets, and other useless crap. A quick scan on the item's Allakhazam page reveals the kind of pain and suffering people go through for 'teh purpels' that grace us with their presence one a month. One poor soul writes:

I was farming in Burning Steppes for a whole week for approximately 5hours per day, looting 'n skinning everything, then selling whole loot to vendor and buying additional rugged leather on AH /caused inflation of rugged leather prices btw :-)/, collected some random rare + epic drops for my alts as a bonus and finally yesterday I exchanged all those armor kits for tickets and bought this nice neck:-) Would I do it again? .... not sure:-)


Another guy puts it more simply:


2400 Rugged Leather -> 480 Rugged Armorkits -> 1200 Darkmoon Faire Prize Ticket


I can put it another way, even simpler: DON'T FUCKING BOTHER. I got something ridiculously better off another fight in a different 5-man that felt like I was battling a grilled cheese sandwich. I actually got 5 sunders on him, then went and got a soda during the fight. I came back from the fridge and we finished him, and he drops this:



This was a PUG that formed on the fly. I'm talking total commitment from "yeah i'll tank" to "i'M rolling Need for Fury" of maybe 1 hour.

Not good enough? Here's a little taste of what I've been disenchanting or passing on... this pic shows a good sample of what I've picked to wear, and other stuff that I've just seen from quest rewards or whatever:




So yeah... I basically played the expansion to 63, and then stopped after realizing two things:

1) playing the beta is a waste of time, since nothing i earn in there 'counts'. All these toons will be wiped once it hits retail, and I've learned what I need to know. That brings me to point number

B) I should be grinding that 48 rogue I shelved awhile back, but just until that little yellow explosion we all know and love signaling 60 happens. Then I'll log him out right where she stands, and start that druid I always told myself I wanted to try.

Don't get me wrong... I'm not a powerleveler, or a grinder by any means (...and denial is the first step!). I abhor the current PVP and rep systems, and choose to completely ignore that whole aspect of the game. Thank god, or I'd probably be viewing the world through a pair of kitchen knives come December. If I spent the last year dragging myself through BWL, AQ40, and Naxx, only to see the new gear you get for 'delivering this envelope to the guy standing 3 feet away' my head would probably just explode. The official forums are going to catch fire and millions of voices are going to cry out in pain... it's going to be awesome.

The point is this: if your guild loves to complain that you guys aren't raiding enough, or they would rather take a druid than you on the next run, happily surrender your raid slot and go level an alt. Having any class that you want to play in the future already at sixty when the expansion drops is going to be the Big Deciding Factor in getting on these 5-man runs... and trust me, there will be about 800,000 running at any given second once the expansion goes live. Obviously no one will want to waste time leveling you in RFC or WC when they can be running around in Outland. Do it now while everyone is so bored standing around Ogrimmar that a twink run through Wailing Caverns seems like the best idea they've heard of all week.

Rested XP in the Outland will net you 1000XP per boar killed, and any class can easily solo grind out there, picking up nice greens, and run 5 man groups for blues. Get on that alt! Time is running out!

The Crusade is coming! The Crusade is coming!

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