It's that time of the month

Edit: Day one of reuniting with the Alliance. Terrified the entire time. Surrounded by people I used to hunt down/hunted me down. No idea where anything is anymore. Spent entire day riding/flying in to Horde towns and getting chased out by guards.
Grouping is fine, the 5-man's I've been in are equal to previous experiences but I have yet to shake off the overall "Flameo, Hotman!" vibe I'm beaming to all these goddamn dwarves.


I'm gearing up for a change. And it's WoW related. You know what that means.


Strap in.

You know, I like the Blood Elves. They have a fabulous story. There was such an outcry when they first got released. The Horde, previously the ugly toughguy badass-exclusive race of beast-men, greenskins and lepers, revolted at the thought of accepting these vain, selfish, reclusive megalomaniac misanthropes. Because they were pretty, we feared that all the morons who would roll Night Elves and dance naked on mailboxes would migrate over.

Well, I say "we" as a greater reference. I personally was going "Fuck yeah, Blood Elves!". I hadn't played a spellcasting class yet, and I figured what better race to pick as a hurler of the arcane than a hateful, revenge-betrayal based sub-faction of polar-Night Elf opposites who were literally addicted to magic.
Not only this, they had actually managed to capture a Naaru and harness it's powers for itself - making them capable of wielding the Light by force.
Read: HORDE-SIDE PALADINS ZOMGGGGGG

Which is what I am now.
Okay, so, I mean, later on at the end of TBC, the Blood Knights actually banded together with the Naaru (and everyone else) and released the captured entity to combat Kiljaeden. They were then granted the gifts of the Light in a more traditional manner by A'dal, in light of our valiance. Pretty slick, guys.

But....I tire of Horde. I've had Horde allegiance for the past two years, but before that I always forget I was Alliance. And of course before that I was Horde again. Shhh.

I mean, the entire theme of The Burning Crusade was that of banding together to defeat a foe that would otherwise destroy us. All sorts of uniting, uplifting speeches by external third parties with phrases like "Put aside your petty squabbles! Or we are going to fucking die!

And we did. There was a single city, Shattrath, that was diplomatic - we had an armistice in place over the whole city. Alliance and Horde relations were pretty damned neutral.
I mean, we were still on Tichondrius, so we never sunk below a certain threshold of "Hey, an Ally. Want to kill him?". But what I'm saying is that sometimes the answer was "....Eh" instead of "CAMP HIM FOREVER".

Wrath of the Lich King has a totally different story. There's an even more ominous, massive, close-to-home level threat looming (read: The. Fucking. Lich. King.), but this time it's all about those petty squabbles.
Like, there's outright hostilities established between the Allies and Horde right now, and there's also significant infighting between different parties within each faction.

.....And it's fairly legitimate, I mean, the Lost King of Stormwind has returned - Varian Wrynn, who legitimately got his life wrecked by Horde slavers.
Er, and a section of the Forsaken betrayed everyone and killed heroes of both factions.
And all sorts of mishaps and toe-steppings continue to go on as both sides fight for the advantage against the Lich King.

The last raid instance, in fact, is a tournament grounds area set up by the Argent Crusade to prepare us for real combat in Icecrown - but even it has been tainted by this new hostility. All the gear is faction-themed, so the opposite faction's weaponry and armor look totally different than yours.


What I'm trying to say is, WotLK made WoW have two separate sides again, and I've only seen one of them. I haven't done Northrend as an Alliance, I don't know about the discovery that Muradin Bronzebeard was still alive (well I mean I do because I read up on it, I devoured that shit), I haven't seen the new Harbor in Stormwind (well, I mean, I have, but only as a trifling blur as we stormed past it to kill the King), etc.
You know what I mean.

So.....(suspecting and expecting this, I believe) the Dev team came out with the Faction Change. Like a name or server change, you can alter a preexisting character. In this case, from faction....to faction.
Which means changing everything - including race.

Well, I think you know who I'd be if I had to suddenly be an Alliance paladin again.

The Draenei have one of the most convoluted backstories in the game - due in part to the fact that there was a preexisting unit called the Draenei that turned out to be a corrupted, mutated version of these "pure" Draenei lookit'sreallyfuckingcomplicatedjustrunwithit.

So. Why not. Why not get ready for the inevitable switch to Alliance for Cataclysm, when we'll really have to pick sides.
And the Horde get a new leader since Thrall has to go become the next Tirisfal Guardian OHMYGODDDD THE LORE WHAT THE LORE ARE YOU, WAIT, GARROSH BECOMES WARCHIEF WHAT OH MY GODDDD
We're going Alliance for Worgen anyway, so why not have an 80 there to help the leveling process.

Plus, I mean, the Blood Elves were pussies anyway.