Well… it finally happened! After a little over half a decade of wowcrafts, we finally got Pandarens! If you haven’t heard of them, that’s ok, they’ve been a pretty secluded race and only seen through obscure references. But yeah, looks like we get to start things off in a beautifully asian looking countryside, get the new monk class (which looks pretty BA btw), and at level 10, we choose a side!
Now… this is something totally awesome to me! Ever since I heard about wowlands, I wanted to have a Horde Dwarf! Don’t ask why… it’s just cool. And according to the manual, you could lose rep with your faction by doing dishonorable kills and gain rep with quests… so back in my noob days (and I was quite the noob… didn’t know they had dungeons until lvl 50ish) I figured I could defect from the Alliance and join the Horde! Of course, that couldn’t happen… but a wee dwarf can dream…
But, with this precedent of choosing a faction independent of the race seems very interesting to me. See, classically the factions were pretty darn racist; you know, humans and orcs don’t mix. But over the years, we’ve met many neutral factions that are made up all kinds of races. And they get along just fine! Now, at it’s basics, I don’t see the Red vs Blue Horde vs Alliance thing to be mainly about race, but rather the use of resources (just like most wars). So my thing is this… if the pandapeoples can be either, and it’s not confusing to the general public cause the enemy will just have a red name and your buds a green, then why is it so taboo for us to together? Why can’t we expatriate ourselves from our current faction to the other? Why can’t my dwarf be a Horde?!?! So what say you, good people of the interwebs?
First vote and comment!
Dumbness FTW!!
now come to think of it maybe i can actually be the leader of my own faction. One with worgens and gnolls and other walking plushie toys all around the place. Then again, the scarlet crusade and their “kill them all and let death judge who was good and who was bad” code of conduct really makes me feel identified with it. XD
ah yes, the Furry Faction… XD
still have scarlet crusade tabards on all my characters btw >)
Single minded zealot tabards?!?!?! were can i get?
i got me the freebie edition (yes, i know im a free-rider, but i got caught by warcraft since 2004 when i saw warcraft 3, and, for someone who only had age of empires 2 and age of mithology, great games though, that game took me over, and then i became aware of the expansion and, while looking for warcraft 4 i found out this game in 2005, and after 6 years i finally get to play it, i really hate monthly fees), so i would like to know how you get that tabard. still want warcraft 4, though.
And im not furry, im planning to take a shave today. >:(
There is supposed to be some reason that pandaren can be both. The current races don’t mix well in the same room unless they have some common goal, such as clearing the scourge or ensuring the world’s end. Imagine a draenei chilling with some orcs and blood elves, the people who carried a genocide against them and who sabotaged their ship, AWKWARD!
I wonder, lorewise, if there will be an explanation as to why the pandamen will hate the other pandamen… like, is it just a choice or do we get something leading up to it? as seen in the above comic… >) btw… I’d choose horde if those were my options. XD
yeah, I remember from the official comics they were doing pretty good together, ya know, until they got attacked, blamed eachother, and continued on their way to try and kill everyone…
yeah, awkward in maximal fashion. I think what they’re doing with the pandaren is what they *should have* done with the goblins, made that a one race expansion and scrapped the whole badly mishandled worgen model mess. It makes FAR more sense for the mercenary goblin race to choose factions personally than to as a whole align either way.
I don’t see them ever allowing currently existing races to faction change, because there’s SO much lore written in drawing in hard and fast US vs THEM lines, with Blizz reinforcing them all the more in Cata. Not like they’ve never bent, or even fractured, their own lore before. I just don’t see them scrapping it entirely.
I’m looking forward to seeing how they write up the introductions to the factions and varying races. From what I’ve seen the Pandaren as a whole don’t really like EITHER faction, seeing both as bringing their disasters in to Pandaria, which explains their “no, if you go with them you canNOT come back” approach. That’s a questline I’m really looking forward, too.
Now if we could just get all the trade trolls to stop with the Kung Fu Panda crap… hey, we can dream…
like blizz has stated before, wowcraft is a LIVE story… so it can change and evolve as needed… even the lore! so if they ever wanted a truce or faction change, I think it could be arranged. heck, look at death knights! or even nelf mages!
but yeah, goblins have always been neutral, so it’s kinda odd for them to choose just 1 side.
also, look at the forsaken… they’re not very fond of any races either… but I guess they tolerate the horde just slightly more.
Shut up with the philosophy, and punt some more gnomes. Stabbing some Alliance scum makes everything better.
lol!
but would you still punt a gnome if it was a horde?
Punt? I would never ever get that close to the vermin.
I would show them “the light” from a goodly distance upwind.
One of ours you say? Oops, my bad. :)
Heck, if only she wasn’t undead.. Did I say that aloud?
At first I was like ‘WTF is Pai doing here?! Why’s she so pale?!’ Then it was ‘Oooh! New lenses!’. The realisation came a few seconds later..
Twi hammer’s seem to have the biggest.. advantages of the lot
Really good comic, mon, methinks I’ll put it in my archives..
XD
yeah, kinda liked the pigtails so I took em! >)
I remember twilight hammer being a pain for everyone since wowclassic. weren’t they those guys out in Silthis? the ones we had to grind to make gold? by gold I mean 1 gold… cause that was boss in the day!
well I’m glad you liked… wait… HEY! pervy old man! >D
yeah, if only she wasnt… er i mean no she isnt pale, she is just using panda paint to lure the new potential recruits.
Oh and, yes, im also glad that the three of them are using bullet proof chest armor.
First… Horde should’ve brought the Blood Elf female… wrong move Garrosh…
Second… what was the Twilight’s hammer lady doing all the while to convince the panda .. ren, so she just jumped to the screen ? O.o ( yes, suprise, I have a dirty mind ! )
and about your poll question. It sounds cool in theory but it would mess up the game and the lore. Sure we have some big characters like Valeera ( A blood elf , King Varian’s companion ) but if you mix the factions up, it will be too much chaos to handle.
The neutral factions are there to show these people can reunite and live together but as a one nation, not as 2 separate factions. If this were to be the case, I would say the factions only would exist because of the power-hungry leaders who don’t want to give the power up to the other guy and well that wouldn’t be soo meaningful for heroes like ourselves to fight in this petty war as a tool for those leader’s greed…
ok my rant is done :P
lol… dirty dirty mind! >D
idk really… I mean, since the lore is an evolving thing, maybe they could have some sort of event that changes everything. can’t be at war forever ya know.
true… see, that’s why things would’ve been much smoother if we had Varok in charge… but noooooo… had to be Garrosh…
I love they new aproch! Its not just a new places with a big bad guy boring
but the aproach is a new land a new start and there are new systems to
make the game intresting!!! Plus i love kung fu panda!
Ok that sounded alot better in my head but you get the piture
heh, yeah, I’m looking forward to the new xpac!
think I’ll name mine PandamanExpress! >)
not sure if you can read it on the “other” column, but i put said, “I don’t think that Pandarens should be able to get to choose their faction while all the other races are auto-assigned to their own factions (and Vice-versa). Either all the races should be able to choose their own faction, or none of them should. Equal Rights FTW!”
hmm… doesn’t seem to show the “others” publicly… weird. ah well.
and yeah, I like your option! I definitely want my horde dwarf! wonder what a GM would say if I asked really really nice. >)
I wish such an option was available. I LOVED playing my tauren shaman (Kleeyo), however I preferred Alliance (from my warcraft RTS addiction bias). I actually suggested such an option in the official forums a long while back, where a player could do a series of quests to betray their faction, get awarded a title “the traitor” or the such and completely change faction and not race.
lol, should’ve known that character was you. XD
a shame they never took up your suggestion. I’d do any amount of daily quests to change factions! I mean, heck, both sides eventually accepted the death knights… and as that quest that brings you through the city with people spitting on you, it just goes to show that you CAN win the favor of the people who used to hate you!
I would *love* to be able to ‘join’ neutral (currently) NPC factions. Unfortunately, from a game-balance perspective, this just isn’t realistic. The Game Theory becomes very complicated when, just as with Newtonian physics, more than two bodies are involved (ref: Three Body Problem.)
Dissolving Horde and Alliance factions leads to another issue: power vacuum. “But we have player guilds, we can use those!” well, not really. After all, this is World of Warcraft, not Guild Wars. ^.^
Two player factions (and no more) helps to drive both the stories in the quests and the PvP aspect of the game. It is these lores and PvPness that really make World of Warcraft the world of war-craft. (And I feel odd stating this, really, ’cause I dont have much use for PvP myself, but it has been a huge part of the Warcraft universe since “Orcs & Humans”. mebbe not so much PvP, but certainly Horde v Alliance.)
supposedly in the new Elder Scrolls Online there will be a 3 faction alignment. it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out.