Alliance vs. Horde?

The age old question. We've all heard the arguments: 'Alliance are all 9 year olds who don't take the game seriously.', 'Horde are 40 year old assholes who have nothing better to do.'. Personally, I've given up on this particular debacle. I have, however, noticed a trend in the individuals who persist with the bashing of the opposite faction.

Generally, players of a lower level, or who have less experience in the game are far more impassioned with their faction. There are a few reasons for this, at least in my opinion. The first being a lack of exposure to the opposing faction. At level 70, I find I have far too much free time, time spent trolling our realm forums. By reading the different posts made by both horde and alliance, one begins to realize that there is a fact a person behind the undead rogue who just ganked you, cannabalized you, and hearthed in the time it took you to get on your main (Yes, I'm bitter. You know who you are!). Maybe they really are a remorseless jerk, but often times they are a logical human being, capable of organized thought and witty banter.

All the while leveling, and even now, there are random level ones in major cities, spamming trade chat in the form of claiming allies should all quit and kill themselves because they're terrible, and horde is so obviously better. I have to wonder if they really think this is a good idea. Suppose that everyone who played alliance suddenly quit and rerolled horde. PvP would be virtually eliminated. There would be no battlegrounds, only arena, and PvP servers would be an oxymoron. Without variety, the game would fail. Blizzard caters to all types of players, both hardcore and casual, both alliance and horde.

Assumptions made about both factions also don't do a thing to help the animosity. Honestly, all of the assumptions made about one faction can be turned around and made about the accuser. I play alliance, and yet, *GASP* I am actually not a nine year old child with a mental deficiency! At 18, I am considered a baby in my guild, most of whom are in their early to mid twenties. Sure, people have moments of immaturity. You'll find that in any player. But it's not recurring, and it's not constant. On the flip side, I've only met one horde with whom I had a serious conflict, and it had nothing to do with the fact that they played horde. The assumption here is that they are all 40 year old virgins, when in fact, I've never met a horde over the age of 30. Of the people I have met, they are reasonable people. Sure, being on a PvP server, I am ganked all the freaking time, but it's the risk I take for having rolled on one. In fact, many of the players that I have met, on both factions, are either my age, or within 5 years of it.

The reason I bring this subject up is because of something that transpired between a real life friend and myself. Upon discovering that she played WoW as well, I asked her what characters she played. At this pont, she had become aware that I played alliance. She told me that her main was an undead hunter (...), and promptly scolded my choice of playing alliance, claiming that in order to take the game seriously, you must play horde. The irony was almost palpable. I responded, halfheartedly, that when I started playing I didn't want to play a skeleton or a cow, so I played alliance. I then changed the subject, so as to avoid further conflict, but there was a nagging in my mind.

My cousin, the paladin with whom I leveled, after playing alliance for a number of months, rolled a tauren shaman to play with my brother, who had recently started playing. I decided to ask him about the differences, of which he said was a moot point. There is immaturity where ever you go. There will always be a Chuck Norris joke, a 'your mom' joke, or the newly instated 'ANAL: [link of an ability or item]'. It doesn't matter what faction you play on, it's going to be there.

The point being that we're all gamers. We all have a level of immaturity, but there is reason and logic as well. Factions don't really make a difference.

Oh, hello.

So I suppose a good introduction to a blog starts with an introduction to the author, huh? I'll give it a try.

You can call me Belle, and my character is a level 70, holy, Night Elf priest, who answers to the name of Bellezza. Having been holy since being able to choose talent points at level 10, it's been an interesting road.

Let me start by saying that my beloved priest was not, in fact, my first character. The first character I ever rolled was a Night Elf hunter, named Nalie. However, if you weren't already aware, hunters are incredibly difficult to figure out, especially if you're totally new to the game. Unless of course it's just me, which is completely possible >.>

Anyway, my computer broke a few weeks after I rolled my hunter, and I didn't bother getting it fixed for a few months. At this point I was in no way addicted to the game.

This all changed in the summer of 2007.

I did a little research on the game, read the guides, looked at different blogs, and decided that what I really wanted to do was heal. I thought it would be exciting, and unlike anything I had previously experienced in an RPG. Granted, my only other RPG experience was about a week of addiction to Diablo 2, but still!

After some consideration, I picked a priest as the class I was going to play. I also picked a Night Elf. Why? One might ask. They are the least priest-friendly. Well, they are pretty. I am a human in real life! Why would I want to play one in a game!? And dwarves... eh... and, at the time, I wasn't digging the whole tails 'n hooves deal. And, no offense, I totally didn't want to run around with a bunch of cows and skeletons. So Night Elf it was!

I leveled... slowly. My cousin rolled a paladin and decided to spec protection to level, so our basic strategy was for him to run in the middle of all the quest mobs, wrangle them all up, and slowly, ever so slowly, tank them all down while I healed him. Anyway, I finally hit 70 in December, and was immediately thrust into my first raiding guild: Snakes on a Raid.

After a good few months of raiding Kara, I was ready for more. I transferred to the Dark Iron server and was accepted until to the guild Varsity Cheerleaders. However, at this point, the memorable patch 2.4 had already been released, and after hoarding my badges, I carefully spent them on worthy upgrades. Therefore, I was, apparently, tier 6 viable.

I saw in trade chat that the guild Kind of a Big Deal had a spot open for a holy priest, so I decided to put an application in. After two very stressful trial runs, I was accepted, and have been with them ever since :D

Now, you may have noticed that this kind little tale did not detail any pvp experiences, even though I've always been on a pvp server. This is because, well, flat out, I'm terrible at pvp. Usually, I would just stand there while some angry horde beat on me, and let him kill me, giving him a /wave while he danced underneath my Spirit of Redemption. I didn't do my first BG until level 66, and I have less than 2000 Honorable Kills, and I am a veritable faliure at anything pertaining to Arena/Battlegrounds. However, I will do my research as I see fit for information relating to priest pvp, simply for the sake of this blog.

Something interesting to note about this particular blog post is that the bulk of it is being written while my guild (and I) is in Black Temple. We've just downed Teron Gorefiend, and are lining up to pull the trash to Reliquary of Souls.

Here's something to think about: I'm vaguely considering posting basic priest healing strategies for various endgame boss fights, but the impending expansion is making it a difficult aspect to approach.

Anyway! I don't want to bore everyone to death on the first post ^_^. Thanks for reading! I'll try to make helpful and interesting posts as often as I can.