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Welcome to another edition of Teh Overpull, spending much of our time telling Microsoft Word that The and Teh are both words in this modern era. Teh Overpull this week is like no other Overpull ever, because its worded differently and that in itself is enough to make it do anything The Overpull can do better. No you cant you say? Well, yes Teh Overpull can.
Word play aside we do have a most excellent Overpull ready and waiting for you this week. As usual its full of news, a comic, lore, and other interesting things. Lets go ahead and dig in.
Heres the lineup this week
This last week hasnt hosted much in the juicy gossip section. The background downloader is going which is to our benefit, but there isnt much more going on.
IgroMir is going on, thats the Russian game convention of some kind, and they have some WoW demos up. A very cool guy went and recorded him playing the WoW Cata beta and came back with some awesome footage which will probably be in a constant loop of getting pulled and put back up. It looks like Worgens will have their own casting animation, can switch between Human and Worgen form, and will probably cause a bigger balance issue with the Alliance vs. Horde as everyone has to be one.
LETS TALK PILGRAMS BOUNTY! The guide for it is right here.
Holidays are generally frustrating. That week of farming all of the Brewfest quests while banging your head in the wall as your cat turns your computer off just as you hop on a ram is one kind of special frustration. The other kind of frustration is being at 39 points of Turkey Tracker just to meet a Shadow Priest who decides he is going to kill that turkey thats in front of you with 3 seconds to go. My Logitech MX 518 (the third one Ive bought) is lucky I dont have anger issues or Im sure I would have smashed it into the ground.
Well, I did get Turkinator on two characters, but lets talk about Darnassus. I loved that city as Alliance and I love it even more as Horde! If you die before you get into the portal youre sent back to Darkshore and have to ride the boat back over. At level 59 (on my alt) this was the funniest event ever. Then you have to either walk through the city to the front gate or die, corpse rez and then sneak into the front gate and sit down. Either way youre wasting at least half an hour. Is any Horde city this well defended? NO. Silvermoon requires a quick walk through WPL to the border and is a straight walk there. Orgrimmar is out in the open and sure Thunder Bluff is a walk through The Barrens & Mulgore, but youd go through there anyway on your way to Org. Undercity? A joke and a short walk to boot from Chillwind Camp.
How is your holiday going? Im finding fun and frustration. The free 320 cooking for me and all of my alts has paid off, but turkey hunting and visiting capital cities were a nightmare on my non stealth classes. Then again, its my fault for doing holidays on alts I suppose.
Whats interesting to me is that the enemies you fight are the Forsaken (again nothing new) but theyre pretty much invading the area like mad. Im still kind of curious of why theyd bother doing that, really, since it seems like a lot of effort. I ask these questions all the time though, so hey.
The Guild this week had more fun and exciting times, as they went and battled that other guild and then it ended in a cliffhanger like always because thats just how things work. Hooray! For those of you who watched it, who thinks Tink will turn on her new guildmates?
The PTR is coming to a close soon. There was some testing done this week and the only big news is Shadowmourne. This massive sword comes equipped with its own cleave and massive Strength boost. 2-hand users be ready to work hard to get this beast of a weapon.
This week's comic seems to confirm that indeed, this is a series, and Holy Cow is possibly not truly a Tauren Priest. How could this be? Teh Overpull is not sure, it's still doing calculations (coming out to be more dots, repeating of course).
Here you go:
If you like the comics, they're donated by Devaira, if you'd like to see more art like this visit her DA.
I'm a Turkey
He's a Turkey!
This weeks subject is elves, because theyre cool. Why are elves cool? Because the singular version is elf which means two things: Christmas and attractive looking females with elongated ears. Both, to your average WoW player are awesome and cool. Let me tell you something though, the rabbit hole goes far with that single word. Elves are a lot more than attractive looking females with elongated ears. Elves have a lot of background in fiction, like in Norse mythology where there are the Æsir. The Norse are cool because they use Æ which looks awesome. Anytime you can use the word grapheme to describe part of your common alphabet you have to be cool. That probably makes no sense to you, which is alright by me, because the important thing is BOLD ITALICS GOOD LOOKING FEMALES WITH ENLONGATED EARS.
There are a lot of elves out there and even more types of elves. Small elves that look like gnomes, kind of like the Keebler elves or the elves in Santas workshop, are the popular choice in our modern non-geek culture which is fine, but WoW already has gnomes! That niche is taken. Then there are the Norse elves which have rocking awesome names like Svartálfar which stands for Dark Elves. Theyre like the Harry Potter I have stolen all of your mail and am now beating my head against the wall kind of elf and not the pretty WoW elves were used to.
Then there are the Ljósálfar, or Light Elves, which a lot of our fantasy elves are kind of based off of (there are also celtic elves and European elves, but well skip the boring history lesson). Theyre more human like and considerably better looking than Dobby the house-elf.
Then there are other types of elves like the ones in Dungeons and Dragons. The Drow, a race of evil dark elves, are what most rolplayers and artists obsess over because they channel that bad girl with platinum white hair and freaky eyes look. There are also regular elves and then the Eladrin which are these wicked looking elves that are suppose to look freaking awesome are like the pinnacle of elves or something. There are like massive essays about em online, which I avoided reading. Of course, everything in D&D has to look good otherwise its not fun. Since part of the game is rambling for half an hour about the swirls in the hair and every square inch of fabric your character is wearing. Im off-track; THERE ARE TOO MANY TYPES OF ELVES.
Finally there are the Tolkien elves. They have a base race and then keep splitting off. I havent read much of the books and the movie is like a brief recap, so Im not going to go too far into it, but theyre pretty much the pretty looking awesome looking elves were used to. Unless you watch the cartoon in which case the elves, at least the dark ones, look short and evil.
Well WoW isnt much different than most of our modern day fantasy conceptions about elves. They got the part where elves are supposed to be SUPER COOL looking and SUPER COOL but also have the BAD ELVES LOOKING BAD because theyre EVIL BECAUSE THEY DUN LUK GUD. Things have to look good to look cool because good and cool are interchangeable almost. Unless youre Link, in which case youre more a hobbit with ears that has everyone calling you by a girls name because no one reads the instruction manual to a game.
Enough talk! Have at you with some facts, or at least what I want to say are the facts. There are the Kaldorei who are Night Elves, the Queldorei who are the Highborne or high elves, and then there is the Sindorei who are known as the Blood Elves. I mentioned how Tolkiens elves are like WoW elves? Well, there is a lot of separation and groups of actions here too, although not to the Tolkien extent. Elves are also one of the oldest races out there, which is true in Tolkiens world too.
In Warcraft I & II the elves were just simply elves and Night Elves (along with Kalimdor) were unknown. With Warcraft III and the accompanying books all of this changed and added in more elves so there were different designs of elves because more designs equal MORE BETTER LOOKING AWESOME ELVES. Well start at the start, at one point everyone was Kaldorei or cool elves I mean Night Elves. They had a caste society and the high caste was known as the Highborne. They were cooler because, I dont know; they had money or had amber eyes or something. Amber eyes means a lot to Night Elves because it shows inherent druidic power, but is shown to be unreliable. Eye color means a lot in the WarCraft universe.
Anyway, the Highborne were pretty much at the beck and call of Azshara. Azshara was their queen because
get this, SHE WAS THE BESTEST MOST PRETTIEST LOOKING ELF OF THEM ALL. I keep laughing everytime I think about it. Azshara wanted to make THE ENTIRE WORLD PRETTY, LOL, so they planned on using the WELL OF ETERNITY (say that with a reverb voice) to accomplish this. Biggest baddie out there Sargeras heard of this, mind controld most of the Highborne, and sent ol Mannorath, Archimonde, and Hakkar (demon not the troll guy) out to help Azshara out. Well, Illidan, Malfurion, Tyrande, Saurfangs brother, Rhonin, and Krasus kicked some butt and sent Sargeras packing. Blah blah, this story is the usual, except with more CLEAVE.
Well, after the fight and the water of the well went everywhere she basically became corrupt by some Old Gods and this made the naga. Shes supposed to be in Nazjatar in the Maelstrom now. So the Naga are an ugly form of elves and UGLY IS BAD so THEY ARE BAD TOO. Moving on.
The Night Elves swore off magic after that and used what was left of the Well of Eternity to make Nordrassil (which isnt Yggdrasil and why can I spell Yggdrasil so easily and Blizzard doesnt copy anything anywhere OK) the world tree which granted them immortality and other stuff. The left over Highborne became the High Elves (they made their own language that changes Queldorei to that or whatever) and threw a cool party to try and show the Night Elves that hey, magic is cool. The Night Elves disgusted by this exiled them to keep from killing all of them. They got on boats and went to the Eastern Kingdoms and founded Quelthalas and then get screwed over a bunch. Oh, and they stopped being purple because purple is druidic while pretty is arcane. Science!
The Night Elves, sticking to their druidic ways (elves are mostly naturalistic/rangers/etc. right?) sat around dreaming in the Emerald Dream and chilling in their forests until the Third War where Nordassil gets razed and they make a new one. High Elves on the other hand have less fun. They fight trolls for a long, long time and then get razed to the ground by the Horde and again by the Scourge. When Arthas was cool he rode in there, rezd Kelthuzad in their Sunwell (which was made with a stolen vial of the Well of Eternities kool-aid), and then corrupted it. Prince Kaelthas destroyed it, went crazy because theyre all addicted to it, and formed the Blood Elves. At that point, its pretty misty what happens because the continuality in WoW is bad, but essentially you go stomp most of them out in TBC and they chill in their capital complaining about it all emo like.
The remaining few High Elves are chilling back in Stormwind and probably will be a playable race in Cataclysm because Night Elves can use magic but as you know, they hate hate hate magic. Then again Thrall hates Warlocks and Orcs can be Warlocks so think on that one for a bit.
Some fun additional trivia. Night Elves are based on the Drow which are Dark Elves with white hair and redish eyes (that get redder when they get mad!), but with a fun twist that makes them good and druidic because Blizzard doesnt base anything on anything else and is very original OK. High Elves are your stereotypical elves as far as us fantasy people are concerned. The Blood Elves are nothing more than High Elves with a new name and the best starting zone ever.
Oh and the bad elves are the Wretched, because of one reason: theyre not pretty. So theyre automatically bad, like the naga. Sure Drow are evil, but they look really pretty so you can spend half an hour rambling about how good looking your Drow is. Whereas as Wretched is, well, just wretched looking and who wants to detail how hideous their elf is?
Other than me
that is.
This weeks question is: Battlegrounds?
See, there is a question mark there meaning that this is a question, but Im not putting any form to it. Its a simple question really figure out what the question is and answer it. I, myself, am going to go on a rant.
I used to love the battlegrounds. They were fun, the difference between gear was obscene, and you either enjoyed getting rolled by a premade, were a premade rolling people, or got to fight it out in a persistent AV where nothing happened until one of the raid bosses were spawned, kited into the cave, and then zerged at which point most people went to bed. WSG was all about the premade and premade could be you and a friend or friends who could just help win the battle by being coordinated.
Now groups are put in a separate queue which makes grouping with friends a pain because it tries to match you with other groups. Oh joy, well you dont have to worry about a premade stomping you even though thats beneficial for most BGs since you get a quick loss instead of a slow one. Of course, added on to that, are the people playing the BGs.
Lets talk about Alterac Valley. Youre Horde; you keep your towers, burn their towers, and push them all the way to their bridge. They keep their graveyard and you keep the one nearby and now its a battle of the road. They cant get past you and you cant get past them. Welcome to the 40 minute battleground. The other day I was playing one where we lost. They killed us so badly they made up for the massive reinforcement difference and then stomped us into the ground.
Now granted this is in a lowbie BG, but still. It wasnt fun to sit there while half the raid did what was supposed to be done (go around on the provided high road) while the other half sat on the road getting farmed. Pshaw I say, pshaw! Im big on point of view and could see how the Alliance were shouting it as their superior tactical skill busted us down to where were nothing while the Horde saw it as a blame game and their fault that they didnt utilize the troops in a way to stomp the weak Alliance. Both are wrong, of course, since everyone was a victim of the game mechanics.
Ive been leveling in AV a good bit recently and 40 minute games are rare, but painful. Blizzard has done A LOT to make all of the BGs as fast as possible, but not everyone wants to be a BG pro and just wants to kill people. Others want XP or honor and want fast matches. Others want nothing at all, just to waste time and OTHERS want to be pros. I say let everyone have their cake and eat it too.
Give us fewer BGs with more linear progression. Ditch all of the BGs now, I mean obviously Cataclysm is going to change things, so get rid of them. Have just a few BGs where there is a linear progression, like Basin, where resources are ticking up and players actions determine the resources except make it fast, easy, and fun. If youre going to keep a massive number of BGs, overhaul them and ditch battlegrounds. Instead make it GAME WIDE. Id buy non-combat pets to support the additional income Blizzard would need for this. You still have 10-20 minute queues for some of the BGs, especially at lower levels where BGs mean a lot more and at off hours.
Then make the battle for Stromgarde, a persistent deathmatch fest where it never really ends (just resets) and you get all of the cool zerging fun of AV in an environment where the rewards are granted when objectives are met instead of when you win or lose. Set the levels to 75 to 85. Why? Because killing lowbies is FUN! Lowbies killing higher level characters is FUN too! Seriously folks, max tier AV isnt fun anymore without lowbies in it.
Sure it takes no skill to kill a lowbie, but its just so satisfying to prey on the weak and so frustrating when the weak kick your butt. Ever been mind controlled off a cliff by a lowbie Priest? When you see that theyre green and just ganked you then you know what anger is.
Ah well, thats my answer to the non-existent weird question. Make BGs have a linear progression that leads to a reward and remove the random factor from the zerg mentality. Then give the pros their Gulch and the people who just want to mess around their deathmatch. Give the levelers/honor farmers their BGs that work back to back to grind whatever it is you need out of them. Make them short, too please; I dont want to be locked into an hour play session because people cap the wrong graveyards.
That is Teh Overpull folks. Stay tuned next week for more awesome news, funny stories, lore, and questions rolled together in your ultimate WoW newsletter.
-David "Xerin" Piner
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