One of the things that has always bugged me about World of Warcraft is how the trumped-up hostilities between the Horde and the Alliance interferes with cooperative gameplay.
Okay, yeah, there’s PvP and that’s supposed to be a decent chunk of the game. And yes, sure, there’s lore and lore is important — I get that.
But Mania the character has no beef with most of the Alliance (except humans — she hates humans) and Mania the player could often use their help. And not being able to talk to them makes that a bit of a pain.
Sometimes we find ways around that, though, and I admit that it is very satisfying when we do.
For example, yesterday I was trying to finish up the quests in Icecrown. I was on the chain that leads up to the three Riders quests (Blood, Frost, and the Unholy) … although I really wasn’t looking forward to getting there because I’ve seen too many people begging for help in General chat and not getting any.
As I did the run-up quests, I noticed a night elf hunter (with a black armored boar) doing the same quests right beside me. In fact a couple of times we were headed for the same doodad-to-be-gathered-or-used at the same time, and one or the other of us would back off politely.
We finished the lead-in quests at about the same time and I noticed her flapping off towards the Rider of Frost, so I followed. I hung back until she attacked the Rider, then I joined in. It was pretty close thing for her, but we took him down. After she’d gotten her health and mana back, she stepped behind me and pointed. My turn!
After my kill, I pointed towards the next Rider and /questioned her. She nodded, and off we went. We killed all three Riders together, twice each since we couldn’t group up properly. And except for a small problem when we aggro’d one of the horses, everything went quite smoothly.
So when that was done, we headed for the next stage of the quest line: Orbaz Bloodbane. Unfortunately, Orbaz killed her boar in about two seconds flat, smashed her a second later, and took me and my slime down a heartbeat after that. I headed right back for my corpse, but she never came back. I was saddened … if nothing else I wanted to apologize for not being good enough to keep her alive.
The story has a happy ending, though. Several hours later I had found a Horde death knight to help me with the fight against Overthane Balargarde, which I kept losing at the very last minute. The fight was cake with a death knight in tow. (DKs are good for that, if nothing else!)
Just as we were about to leave, a gryphon set down next to us. It was my night elf! I explained to the death knight how I happened to know her, and he agreed that we should stay to help. Three minutes, one fight, and two long dialogs later, we all set off in our own directions, waving happily at each other and — in my case at least — smiling broadly.
Yeah, such times are great about wow, when you meet a friendly member of the opposing faction. You can write stories very well Mania :)
I’ve had similar occurrences at various points in my WoW experience. My attitude is simple: I’ll help anyone who wants to cooperate, communication hindrances be damned. And sometimes people in the other faction are more helpful than people in my own. Sometimes I think it would be really neat if there was a way to bridge the cross-faction gap, for those of us for whom PvP is of no particular interest. But that ain’t gonna happen…
Before WoW, the lore was pointing towards peace. However, no matter how many times you tell a Horde member that Gnome punting will never be an Olympic sport they just keep practicing, and convincing an Alliance member that those juicy Tauren steaks are the cause of their coronary prolems is just as fruitless. ;)
I think the WoW storyline would lose quite a bit without the Horde/Alliance tensions in the background spicing things up. The internal conflict within the factions over it (i.e. Jaina vs Wrynn, Thrall vs Grom) is a fairly significant part of the way players interact with their faction leaders.
Besides, without the faction split, you would never get to enjoy the challenge of try to communicate solely through the pre-canned emotes. This makes for a much better story than “I asked a night elf doing the same quests I was for help via ‘say’ and they accepted” :)
Despite being from a PvP server, I’ve been part of such cooperation numerous times. (We have as many carebears on the server as hardcore gankers.) It’s always rewarding when situations like that work out. :)
Wish I’d been there to help with Orbaz. He’s actually really easy for a hunter! Just flip on aspect of the cheetah and kite him all the way around the central circle. You can leave your pet of choice’s growl off and let him/her nip at his heels the whole way.
I think the undead used to be able to communicate between both factions but as they were non too polite about it their language got changed.
The devided factions are nessesary but you’re right. It would be nice to be able to talk to the other side. Maybe after a really long quest you could get the Orb of Many Voices.
I remember leveling my first toon, a belf hunter, in tanaris and trying to do a gorashi killing quest. While stopped in town a nelf started whistling and dancing with me. I joined in and laughed and we chased each other.
Well we ended up at the bug hive together and took turns killing bugs. Halfway through a dwarf popped up and started attacking me and the nelf started /ying something to him and he stopped and we all killed bugs till we finished the quest.
Then we turned in and danced some more before separating.
I never attack lower level opposite faction unless they’re messing with someone I’m helping and I tend to gauge another 80 before doing anything to see if they’ll be as nice as me. xD
Bah, Horde vs Alliance is just artificial politics. It’s always disappointing, but never surprising, to see how far some people take it. Straight into real life sometimes.
The are rumors about how Cataclysm is supposed to throw out the uneasy truce and put things back into a full war… Sounds like a step backwards.
BTW, can you talk to other faction people with a custom emote? For example, doing /me followed by what you want to say?
@Mr Perfect: No, it just says something like ” acts strangely” (that isn’t the right message, but the game subs in the same message all the time no matter what you actually do)
I have good memories like this of players who, like me, strive for the cooperation option instead of the pvp match.
I leveled a skinner once and helped a hunter from the other faction kill the mobs so I could get the skins. it worked well and pleasant but the lack of communication was awkward and sad.
when the expansion first came I really expected death knights to be able to speak to both factions. it felt like a big hypocrisy to be death knights under the lich king command and still feel obliged enough to your previous faction to not speak the other’s faction tongue.
when I leveled my second char through northerned and most of my guild were busy with something else I more often than not found players from the other factions helping me with the bigger elite quests. specially those you can complete with one more friend to help even if the quest log state as 5 men quest.
in this way it felt that northerned brought players to play together much more than the over competitive BC.
I think part of why this happened was Blizzard turning WoW’s focus more toward soloing than group work. By making soloing more enjoyable/efficient than it used to be, Blizzard pushed more players to be out there on their own. Without allies, people would be more likely to be accepting of cross-faction help, just to make the going easier.
PVP is important for winning Wintergrasp and getting in to Vault of Archavon for Tier 10 gear. Guess what Mania? <a href=" http://guntitan.wordpress.com/2010/03/10/it-does-exist-part-ii/" I got Time-Lost Proto-Drake.
I’m glad you found such a nice Nelf Mania :)
my own latest experience was a nelf rewarding me for helping him when I realized he didn’t seem to grasp he should root the elite- run away and heal, was taunting my boomkin with his own by flagging himself pvp.
Yeah… no :|
And another kudos to that DK for helping you, help that hunter :)
Very cool story, Mania. It’s wonderful when these things happen. It’s only happened with me a couple of times; somehow not being able to talk directly makes it even better, maybe because you’re completely relying on the good will of the other person.
I was wishing for more “cooperation” when I was fishing in in the Orc capital city… which I can’t remember how to spell correctly. :)
I know at least a couple Horde players left me alone, but I still got killed 4 times – when I was first fishing by the portal trainer. Ther is just no place not to be seen – or heard – there.
So I did a death-run to the other fishing spot, and tried to hide behind the rocks at the waterfall = saw a L60 Tauren DK and a L80 Hunter as they were trying to set-up their attacks on me – and shadowmelded before they attacked. [One advantage of being a NElf].
DK dropped a DnD on top of me, and Hunter volleyed onto my position – but neither had flagged themselves for PVP, so it didn’t put me in combat. :)
While fishing by the portal trainer, also had a L10 and a L12 try to attack me… but even a naked L80 isn’t hurt much by a toon 70-levels lower.
The L12 emoted a sigh, and danced with me – which I joined-in…
The L10 either got some help or just attracted attention to my existence – I got killed, the L10 got an honorable kill – and emoted a hug to my corpse. Ya gotta laugh… :)