T w e n t y S i d e d
I’ve played on several servers, both Horde and Alliance. I’ve started several characters and met quite a few people. It’s been fun, and now that I’ve taken that first big draught I think I know enough to pick a home and focus on just a few characters. (Having only one character? Are you mad?) I’ve found a server where I’m happy, Alliance-side. (Kirin Tor.) Now I’m looking for something Horde side. Here is what I’m interested in:
- Roleplaying server – It’s like a magical idiot filter!
- Non-PvP – I’m a builder, not a competitor.
- Something with a nice mature guild of people that can let me join and who can tolerate the endless onslaught of newbie questions.
On Kirin Tor, I’ve joined the Pig & Whistle Society, who have all endured my child-like fountain of questions with admirable patience. I’m looking for something similar Horde side.
Just my notes on what I plan to write on this game cover a page. I was planning to do a new MMO every couple of weeks, but there is no way I can get a handle on WoW in that timeframe.
Crysis 2
Crysis 2 has basically the same plot as Half-Life 2. So why is one a classic and the other simply obnoxious and tiresome?
Dead Island
A stream-of-gameplay review of Dead Island. This game is a cavalcade of bugs and bad design choices.
Rage 2
The game was a dud, and I'm convinced a big part of that is due to the way the game leaned into its story. Its terrible, cringe-inducing story.
Programming Vexations
Here is a 13 part series where I talk about programming games, programming languages, and programming problems.
Best. Plot Twist. Ever.
Few people remember BioWare's Jade Empire, but it had a unique setting and a really well-executed plot twist.
The Pig and Whistle Society is the Alliance-side sister guild of the Blacksky Company Horde guild, also on Kirin Tor. Both are RPG.net-based.
Earthen Ring has a number of established Horde roleplaying guilds, including Tears of Draenor and the Calling. However, since ER is one of the original servers, it’s mostly at this point a non-RP server, since so many people migrated there due to roleplaying friends (and then they invited friends, and so on, and so on). So, while there are roleplaying guilds, Barrens chat is still obnoxious and in a lot of places people will look at you funny for roleplaying.
Argent Dawn is, I believe, the other original RP server. I’ve never played there, but I suspect it’s in the same boat as Earthen Ring.
There was a brief exodus last year of Earthen Ring roleplayers to Cenarion Circle and Feathermoon, but I don’t know whether they’ve stuck.
Looking forward to hearing what you think of WoW. IMO it’s by far the most polished of the MMOs out there. If you want, by the time you’re finished trying it out I should have a trial key for Age of Conan. I’m curious what you would think of it.
Yeah, you join BSC the same way you do P&W. Both guilds grew from the rpg.net forums, BSC predating the P&W by a month or two. Until the last year or so, BSC was a good deal larger than us, but the two guilds have pretty much evened out. They’re a bit more focused on end game raiding than we are, but still very cool to new folks. And yes, several people have characters in both guilds, so you’ll see a few familiar names if you look at the notes on the guild list.
Plus, you can smuggle kittens to the Horde if your Horde characters are on the same server.
That’s great, Shamus! I’m starting a new alt on Kirin Tor asap. If it turns out you’re going to be there (and on WoW) a while, I might even transfer my main there. Let us know! Looking forward to meeting you (sort of). :-)
Aww! :( But it’d be so cool for you to join us on Quel’dorei – but it’s a PvE server, though, not an RP server. It’s got a medium-sized population and I’ve heard that slightly more Horde play on it than Alliance, but I could be misinformed. Our guild is Caketown and we’ve got some really nice people here. The officers are very good at playing their classes and they’re very diplomatic (and my RL friends)!
The Fire Festival is pretty fun so far. Grabbing the flames from the Ally capitals has been…interesting. ^_^ And what’s better than burping a cone of fire?!
Good to see your life will soon be consumed as mine was, that fateful day four months ago. >_< Don’t make any plans for the next few years.
If you pick a PvP server where the Horde outnumbers the Alliance 3 to 1 or so (like Ravenholdt, which last time I looked had as many blood elves as there were Alliance), the PvP pretty much passes you by as Horde.
On the other hand, my Horde character was on Bronzebeard, with friends.
I’ll note that on PvE servers, you can have characters on both sides, it is only PvP servers where you have to pick a side and can’t create characters on the other side.
I’ll probably be back, should be interesting to see how the deathknights work out.
World of Warcraft Summarized in Three Paragraphs (sort of):
The Good: Blizzard understands the meaning of “fun” and has created a game that is light-hearted, entertaining and accessible to almost anyone. It also has one of the best user interfaces of any MMO on the market, that is both customizable and modable.
The Bad: Quest loot drops are often AGONIZINGLY SLOW! I know that many disagree with me on this subject, but I fully believe that drop rates for quest items should be 100%. Period. There is nothing fun about standing around killing the same mob over, and over, and over, and over again, waiting for it to drop the damn item you need to complete the quest. This is simply lazy game design.
The Ugly: The overall maturity level of the player base. This can be avoided somewhat by going to a role-playing server. But every server has its share of adolescent boys who love to be asshats. I wonder why common decency is no longer taught by parents today? It’s rather sad.
See, Shamus… now you can just throw all of your notes out the window. I simplified the whole thing for you! (smile)
I was on one of the very first RP servers (Feathermoon), where I spent two fantastic years roleplaying and finding great friends, who I still visit in the #feathermoon IRC channel. (My WoW account expired in 2005)
From what I hear, Feathermoon as a whole is now a whole, unidentifiably different beast than from its heyday when I was on it, but the RP is still there and going strong if you look for it.
If you’re looking for a mature, newbie-tolerant guild on Horde side, Rotten Luck of The Scryers is an excellent choice. And we’re on a non-PvP RP server to boot.
Yay, Kirin Tor!
That’s where my 70 is! Drop a whisper to “South” allianceside if you’re ever in the mood to trivialize content and gain a massive amount of free items, won’t you? I’ve got a druid (drood) hordeside also…but she’s not as impressive.
If you like, you can try out Trusted Few…but they’re not likely to be as active as the above mentioned sister guild.
Good luck with the barrens…and I look foreward to playing with you somtime!
Been playing since the game came out… 5 years now? Still haven’t experienced the whole thing. Have fun! :-)
Just don’t join an RP-PvP server. I thought initially they’d be exactly what I was looking for (World PvP with an idiot filter!) but somehow the PvP aspect cancels out the RP aspect, and you end up with just as many idiots.
Joined the Kirin Tor alliance side. Weee!
Why do I get the feeling that Kirin Tor will have a sudden influx of new players over the next couple of days… :)
I must admit, I always find it a bit facinating when I hear people talk about servers in WoW (and other MMO’s). Mostly, I don’t understand why nobody seems to find it annoying. I know I would.
Then again, I might just be spoiled by Guid Wars in that regard.
I’d be more worried about a mass influx to our guild if the people on Shamus’s comments weren’t generally pretty awesome. (Evidence A: http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1719)
If his WoW series continues and becomes insanely popular and we get hundreds of random gobsmacks who show up, we might have to do something to curb the tide of new folks, but if you guys are as cool as you generally are, I don’t see any problem with an influx of lowbies. Just be sure to be cool.
:)
Leslee: It is, by some. It’s just that the anonymity of the internet allows “rebellious” teens to say and do things they otherwise wouldnt (see: Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory)
Lo, and so the end days began.
One by one the great champions of coherence, sanity and the single player way of life began to fall before the MMORPG juggernaut.
Abandon hope all ye that enter here!
;-)
Shamus, I hope you keep playing, because I would definitely join a Twenty Sided guild if you made one!
Just don't join an RP-PvP server Yeah, but it was, all in all, worth it to level to 70 on Ravenhold, which is RP PvP, even if I was Alliance in a world dominated (about 65% or more) by the horde.
Of course I did a lot of my playing from 5:00 a.m. to 6:30 a.m. ;)
My first time on WOW i played through on a RP server and I agree, it is like an idiot filter. I rejoined recently to play with a friend on his PVP server and its been horrors all along. Level 70s camping in Duskwood to gank guys 40 levels lower than them etc. Its been a horror story. I am struggling to get to 70, but its been hard to not throw my laptop through a window.
Is world pvp really an issue anymore? I mean, sure there’s ganking going on, but serious lv70vlv70 combat? From what I’ve seen on my server (which is a ‘normal’), world pvp is pretty much dead. It kind of makes me sad, because terrain gets incredibly boring after the 1000th time fighting on the same map.
It should be noted that the ‘levelling game’ is completley different to the ‘endgame’ — levelling’s mostly solo, with random groups, while hopefully in the endgame it’s mostly just playing with friends, whether in organized pvp or in raidings.
This is sad. I just got tired of the game and my subscription ran out. I’ll be missing out on all the shamus on WoW goodness.
I am currently on Sentinels horde side, our guild is great fun, Portals of the Nether. We kind of fell apart a couple of months ago (out of 5 officers all but one left inside of a month) but we are building back up. If you are interested drop me a message “Menin” I have found many more mature players on the horde side. I am not sure why that is. On The Scryers there is a guild I have some RL friends in, and I will join once I can get ahold of them. Outriders. I’ve only played on RP servers.
RE: World PvP:
Yeah, but to get Thrallmar rep you need to do hellfire fortifications… which leads to alliance killing me and corpse camping me. Although that said, some alliance actually get that it’s feasible for us to just take turns capturing them
Well, I play on Windrunner, which is a Normal server. I’m only playing Horde-side right now, and after witnessing some of the things that Alliance characters have done, I refuse to play Alliance on the server. Serious, serious wankerage on the part of the Alliance high-levels that seem to think that it’s just great fun to waltz into lowbie areas and cause trouble that the lowbies can’t deal with. Like whacking quest givers and Skymasters and such. But other than that, it’s a lot of fun. Normally it’s not as bad as it is right now, but they just started the Midsummer Festival, so the Alliance has been raiding the Horde capitals hardcore for days now (the festival actively encourages PvP).
Ooh, if you’re jumping from game to game, I hope you try out City of Heroes!
MMO will only be able to legitimately call itself MMO when that “what server are you on?” bullshit dies. Everybody should be inhabiting the same sprawling gameworld. How awesome would that be?
kamagurka: Ugh. One of the most frustrating parts of playing an MMO is having to spend so much time running around through empty space. (I just made my first visit to the Exodar, a capital city, so this is fresh in my mind.) It is frustrating, but I put up with it because I realize the alternative is constant interaction with other players. When you are playing a MASSIVELY multiplayer game, you need big areas to give players some space.
Consider this, and consider that WoW has some 7 million subscribers. Then let’s say, to be generous, that only 1/10th are playing at once, even during peak hours. That’s still 700,000 players. There are two possibilities: the game will have to be enlarged so much that finding your friends will be time consuming because traveling to meet each other will be a long involved process, or everything will be so crowded as to make even simple tasks like talking to an NPC or killing a monster.
If I remember right (someone please correct me if I’m wrong), Eve Online is run on a single server. I played the trial, and I remember vividly how much time was spent travelling from one place to another. There are some clear advantages to this system, but there are clear disadvantages as well.
World size issues aside, Blizzard’s scheme of rolling out servers piecemeal let’s anyone who wants to be a big fish in a relatively small or new pond.
Welcome to the addiction Shamus.
If you happen by Scarlet Crusade Horde side, I’m always willing to help out and answer questions if I can. Ishaba is my main if you want to say hi.
Post questions! I’m sure we can be forthcoming with (voluminous) answers ;D
The title of this entry reminds me of the following comic:
http://www.lfgcomic.com/
have fun! I enjoyed WOW while I played.
When I played WoW, I started playing RP servers looking for, y’know, roleplayers. I kept using them for the above-touted “idiot filter” effect. The only actual roleplayers I ever found were on PVP-RP servers, which also had even less idiots.
Hey,
Just wanted to update. I’m now Kahooli a gnome (for the stat bonuses) mage. Lvl 6 and counting! This is so far my only alt on Kirin Tor, but I’m a skinner/miner, so I’ll have plenty of gold soon enough. Feel free to drop me a line.
You want to play on an RP server Hordeside?
Come play on Sisters of Elune! We’re one of the few servers with more Horde than Alliance. We have active Roleplay on both sides, and we’ve been fairly successful at driving idiots to re-roll on other servers.
I am on the edge of making the decision to get back into WoW after a year long hiatus. Getting into a nice guild that made grouping easy would definitely push me over the edge. How do I go about signing up for Pig Whistle / Blacksky Company? Is your member list large enough and have a level spread large enough to make finding a group easy? How strict are you in regards to the “roleplaying” aspect? I am a little unfamiliar as to what some of the benefits of guilds can be, so if somebody can let me know all the “features” of these guilds I would appreciate it immensely!!
I have been playing WoW for four years now (since open beta), but have been on the verge of giving up. Since the release of the first expansion and the onset of raid-oriented endgame, I find myself spending my playing time almost entirely solo. I try to be active in my guild, but I simply cannot (will not) sacrifice my family life to the game to the extent that would allow me to raid (or even to instance on a weekly basis). I have tried in vain to find a “casual” guild that does not still have most of its members tied up in raiding or preparing for raiding most of the time.
After a month of withdrawal pains, I am considering trying out RP in order to give the game one last chance. I would love to have some suggestions for a guild to try. I am looking for medium RP, non-raiding, tolerant of a newbie RPer. I have never played Horde at all, but would be willing to try it out. (I could never identify with being Horde, but perhaps with a storyline of how I became that way…..)