It's A Beautiful Day

Bugger! I did have a post ready and willing but Blogger seems only to have saved a copy from 2 days ago. I have used Blogger for 2 and a half years now and written 330 posts without any major problems until now. I have had glitches before, with not being able to add pictures but nothing major to worry about. That is until yesterday when it decided to lose a couple of hours work. I was too annoyed to rewrite the post yesterday so I wrote about a the concept of a single player MMO.

I am now ready to tackle the missing article from yesterday, but I am slightly worried it will not be as vitriolic as the original. Writing can be cathartic and I no longer have the bile left in me to express my disappointment in Blizzard. Sometimes when you write, you can recall the gist of your narrative but now I can't remember a word of what I wrote, so big apologies and I will try to piece together my thoughts

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Thanks Blizzard, Thanks a bleedin bunch. As an Alliance only player I believe this is utterly beneath contempt, I was angry at the time and now I am absolutely seething. If I had any backbone I would rage quit wave the Bird at Blizzard HQ. This is what I wrote then

"Now here is where everything gets a little murky and if anything Blizzard have deliberately muddied the waters. Is the vote on the best looking Chopper, or is it this contest between Horde and Alliance? Does everybody get the Chopper, or just characters of the winning faction?"

We have some of the answers now, and it appears that the Horde will get an extra mount and Alliance can whistle Dixie. No long is it "For the Horde" it is "Up yours Alliance" No need to answer the question, we have the result of the North Korean Election and it is no surprise to most players, "Blizzard loves Horde".


The competition is flawed, it is as stupid as if  Metzen and Morhaime had said which is the sexiest race, Female Blood Elf or Male Undead and then after a crushing victory for Female Blood Elves, all Female players are awarded 3 months free game time. As if these two things were associated.

In a straight vote between Horde and Alliance, the Alliance win hands down. According to the Blizzard figures the breakdown of characters is 52% Alliance and 47% Horde, with 1% Pandas still stuck on Turtle Island. With 7.5 Million subscribers that leaves the Horde short by 37,500 votes. Make the vote purely about the aesthetics of 2 choppers one which looks fairly cool and contrast it against an ugly looking metallic insect then the vote is a foregone conclusion.

Azeroth Choppers was headed up by two senior Blizzard employees both of whom have strong links with the Horde, then it is no surprise when the Horde wins the competition by what looks like a mile, but lets be honest we have never seen the figures just some crap piece of graphics indicating a crushing win for the Horde.

Even after this whole debacle Blizzard could have still changed the rules, but instead they chose to humiliate and upset more than half of their subscribers, it sends a powerful message that they don't care if they upset customers on the way, because all is fair in love and war.

I always believed the Horde was the underdog in Warcraft, but now I feel like the aggrieved, it was funny that things in the game where not always balanced, that Alterac Valley is not symetrical, or that the Fishing Quest had most of the pools next door to Horde Flightpoints. Blizzard loves Horde was a battle chant that the Alliance could unite behind, but Blizzard hates Alliance is not a nice twist on the same story.

Every expansion appears to be a Horde storyline with a few breadcrumbs for the Alliance to pick up, certainly Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria and Warlords of Draenor are 90% Horde centric. The Alliance complained that during Mists of Pandaria, an expansion about War and the consequences of War, that it is a story told from the perspective of the Horde and not the Victors. Maybe Blizzard are incapable of writing from an Alliance perspective, because it seems too easy to write from the perspective of the world aggressors.

Blizzard seems to have an issue with balance, and it is something that needs to be looked at sooner rather than later. Horde v's Alliance, Horde wins, Male v's Female character stories, Males win by a massive amount.

It is obviously a harder sell for the Horde than Alliance, and I believe historically the numbers used to be skewed heavily in favour of the Alliance, but rumours of the Horde being the PvP kings, and Achievements needing max level characters on both sides and the introduction of a Horde "pretty race" in the shape of the Blood Elves have helped to balance the numbers so that 52-47 looks like a good balance, but do we need to keep pandering to the underdogs?

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On a much lighter note, I was following some You Tube links when I came across "Hottest Celeb Chicks Who Play WoW". Assuming this was the work of some spotty adolescent who is fantasising they can get off with a Famous Girl Gamer, purely because they share an interest in the same game. I was shocked to find it was the work of Panser no doubt pandering to her male fan club. You understand that I was only viewing the You Tube video in the interests of research, and after watching I noticed the section on the right had the music video "Do You Wanna Date My Avatar" by Felicia Day. I ended up watching the 1st Season of the Guild, and of course I have now watched them all.

If for some reason you have been living in a cave for the last few years, obviously the one next door to mine then I can heartily recommend watching them all. It might be an imaginary MMO but we all know which one is the basis for most of the material.

I have been aware of the Guild for a long time, since some friends likened my wife to Clara, saying that she would leave the kids to their own devices whilst she gorged on mammoth gaming sessions. All of this is of course lies and my wife will take you to court if you suggest otherwise. It was worth the wait and I think that I might even watch the episodes without playing at the same time, so that I can concentrate on the annotation that comes with each episode.