From Dumpy Dwarf to Valley Pally…

“He did it. He actually did it!”

Brighde’s eyes were barely open when they were assaulted with a collage of colors that looked as if someone had set off a bomb in a warehouse full of paint. She knew instantly that what she had scoffed at a moment before was now pure, unadultarated, undeniable, and unfathomable fact.

The evening before Brighde met a creepy old wizard in the depths of Ironforge,  in a place no decent dwarf ventured called the “Forlorn Cavern”.

“That creepy old bugger actually did what he said he could” she repeated to no one in particular. 

She struggled to her feet, her head feeling as if it had been flattened by a steam tank.  Her feet, in fact, where the second thing she noticed – they were much further from her head than they should have been. Not only that they were much smaller.  Her eyes focusing, she glanced around her at surroundings that appeared as if they were decorated by a half crazed night elf…

“OR A BLOOD ELF!” she screamed suddenly.

Yes Virginia (or whatever your name happens to be dear reader) faction changes have finally come to the land of Azeroth.  Myself I have been playing both sides of the “faction fence” for years now. There are some of you out there, however, to whom the horde or the alliance are the soul source of “ass-hatery” in the land of  Azeroth.  Now is the chance for everyone to find out if they were right, or oh so terribly wrong…

Anyone who listens to the No Prisoners, No Mercy show has heard how often (and believe me on or off the air it is OFTEN) that Fran is able to complete my sentences and not be wrong about what I was going to say.  Some say I have a glass head. Myself I put it off to growing more alike as people with each passing year. So much so, in fact, that I am certain that, by the time we are both in our sixties we will be the same person.

And that, of course, is exactly what many people in the World of Warcraft Community fear: the homogenizing of WoW (with apologies to our Tauren friends out there).

As soon as faction changes were announced instantly cries arouse of “can class changes be very far behind?” similar hue and cries where heard when the Horde was able to have a paladin class and the Alliance was able to have the shaman class.  When all things are considered, however, if nothing else, “homogenizing” of the factions prevents complaints that one side or the other has an unfair advantage over the other in pvp or pve.

More than that, however, what this does is breath new life into the old game, just when things are starting to get a bit stale.   Now the last thing that the 800 pound Activision/Blizzard gorilla has to worry about these days is loss of players.  Activision/Blizzard bans more players than some games HAVE players. Still, with Champions Online just released, and Aion as well as Fallen Earth just around the corner it’s almost as if the timing was planned wasn’t it?

Well of course it was – and a good bit of marketing it was at that, wasn’t it?

Here is a company (the “Blizzard” in “Activision/Blizzard”) that is famous for having work “done when it is done.” They announce that there will be faction changes in the future, knowing full well that most of the world will expect the changes to be released at some point in the far flung future.  Yet here they are, and with it comes the chance to pull the proverbial stick out of the mud.  Whether on Alliance side or Horde side, nothing is worse than actually finding yourself in a den of “ass-hatery”.   Even if that is not the case, many of us (myself included) have rolled and re-rolled Death Knights and seen that stretch between 60 to 70 in Outlands as a yawning chasm that would put the Grand Canyon to shame.

Now I, and others like me, have the chance to dust off that character from the opposite alliance, dust her off and put her back to work again.  And if, like me, you saved half of the quests in Northrend for later (the Grizzly Hills side in my case) now is when it all pays off.

See you online (in Azeroth)

Julie Whitefeather

*edit*

And by request of my co-host, here (at left) is the new “me” – a blood elf paladin. Brighde has never looked so good. And best of all I got to keep my Swift Brewfest Ram.