AFR #236 – Sharing

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Sadly, this has kind of been the Alliance story this expansion: not so much an effective opponent to the Horde as a spectator to the Horde’s self-destruction.

AFR #225 – Inspirational

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We found the kid.  Why are we still in Pandaria?  Yes, I know we’re there because it’s a new place to explore and do quests and kill bad guys and take their stuff, but story-wise?  The Horde quests say something about seizing the new land’s resources, but unless the ability to grow huge vegetables is critical to the Horde’s war effort, I don’t really see what the Horde stands to gain in Pandaria that is worth the commitment of troops and effort.  And the Alliance really needs a better mission statement than: “Stop the Horde from doing stuff.”

AFR #204 – Off key

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Okay, now we know why the Alliance is the Chicago Cubs of Azeroth: this is the quality of their soldiers. I mean, I get that “kill the dudes to get the keys to open the cages and let your dudes out” is a standard type of quest, but honestly, guys!  They’re not even cages!  They’re roofless, rickety bundles of twigs put together by mentally defective monkey people!  An asthmatic toddler could kick his way out of them.  Or, I don’t know, climb out the open top!

AFR #201 – Common ground zero

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Doing the Theramore scenario was a strange experience.  As a piece of gameplay, I loved it.  It was dynamic and challenging with a faster flow than the cc, pull, position, fight, heal up, move on staccato of dungeons.  Coordinating with two other people was much easier than with four others and the scenario allowed multiple ways of accomplishing the same goals. I can’t wait to do more scenarios

As an experience for my characters, it was horrifying.  My Alliance characters arrived at the scene of a horrible attack too late to do anything but stop it from getting any worse.  By the end I felt like we had achieved nothing.  (Yes, I know there’s some mumbo-jumbo about a focusing doohickey, but that has no emotional impact.  I shouldn’t have to read a novel in order to understand what’s going on in my game.)  It felt like one more crushing defeat for the incompetent Alliance.  When I got home I checked my mail and got a tabard for a bombed-out hole in the ground.  Great.

My Horde characters ran roughshod over the Alliance as usual and all was fine until the end.  When the smug blood elf (really, do they come in any other variety?) explained about how our assault was nothing but a diversion for the real attack with a weapon of mass destruction, I felt both sick at the thought of what I had helped set in motion and angry that all the hard work I had just done had in the end been meaningless.  I was not a proud warrior fighting for my people, I was the patsy in some warmonger’s game.  I got home, checked my mail, and got a toy bomb.  It made me sick to my stomach.

I suppose Blizzard could say that they wanted to provoke an emotional reaction, and they did, but I won’t be playing Theramore again soon, if ever.  That’s not what I want in my games.

Cataclysm retrospective: questing

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If you quested as Horde in Cataclysm, you beat the crap out of the Alliance.

If you quested as Alliance in Cataclysm, you got the crap beaten out of you by the Horde, and went to a wedding.