35 thoughts on “The Amazing Races! (Semi-RPishness inside)”

1. I loved this! But, if you ever come over to Moon Guard US, look up my female BElf Arissia… she is silly, bouncy, and obsessed with cooking… not that she does it WELL (RP wise… she honestly is a good cook in game -g-) but her pets seem ti enjoy eating the messes… well… sometimes…

   The one thing Rissa *isn’t* is haughty 😀

2. I only have alliance characters but my favourites to RP are my Dwarves, of which I have 3. My first was Hulan and she is the only one that has any detailed kind of backstory. She’s pretty easy-going, light-hearted and funny although she does have her deeper side. She a great believer that a pint or ten will cure most ills.

   Dimity is a paladin (prot/ret) and I made her a redhead and gave her a temper to match. She is much more bolshie than Hulan and never happier than when burying a very big mace in something’s skull. She is fierce and brave but has a bit of an attitude problem with authority.

   Nithu is a Death Night and my most recent Dwarf. For me, her class, has had a big effect on her personality. With the other two, they ended up in a class that suited them. With Nithu the assumption is that she was a paladin (maybe a warrior) because of her fighting prowess but everything before her awakening as a DK is gone from her memory. She can make educated guesses at some of it but she doesn’t know, all she sees is the prevailing attitude to DKs which is, mostly, negative. She also judges herself quite harshly and all this combines to make her personality come out very different. She is wary and quiet, always second-guessing others and so on.

   In some ways all three of them slot into the stereotypical Dwarf but (to me anyway) they all feel very different and distinct from each other.

3. Tauren love 4 ever!

   I also find that I had to give Neg a time line to nail down her beliefs. Since she was a child before Thrall landed in Kalimdor, her mentality towards the other races is decidedly old fashioned: Tauren > Trolls/Orcs > Night Elves > Undead/Blood Elves > all other Alliance.

   Whenever I roll an alt, my guildees just automatically say: “Let me guess, another female tauren?” :3

4. Pike, you said “I LOVE TROLLS! Love them all.” This is the right answer.

   “We trolls mate for life, of course we also believe in frequent reincarnation!”

   And tusks>no tusks.

5. ok… your love of gnomes is misplaced. If you were talking about Tarus in Final Fantasy XI, then I’d understand. THOSE are cute and lovable and just plain awesome. Gnomes are horrible creatures who are discussing in their design… and it doesn’t help that most people who play as gnomes turn out to be jerks. I know that’s a little bit of biased based on my own personnel experience, but I’ve been playing the game for years and have yet to come across a nice gnome in the game.

   As for the rest, I love your takes on the races. RPing is fun and adds even more to playing a game like WoW. Keep writing them and we’ll keep reading them… Thanks! =)

6. I went through the trouble of trying to link a pic on my comment above…. just use this web address. The picture is cute! =)

   http://ladygamer.net/images/Taru_Fulalliance.jpg

7. Ever hear of All the Worlds a Stage from wowinsider.com? It’s amazing. Truly is.
   It’s helped me overcome so many roleplaying obstacles!

   And I love Tawyn’s personality, it’s so fresh and unique. How come I never thought of that?

8. Every character i roll is an Orc, i love their lore and storylines too much to roll something else. It’s hard to be non cliche with Orcs, that’s understandable. Hell, it took me a bit (all of leveling to 70) to figure out Kord’s backstory.

9. We got de good stuff mon!

   Trolls are by far and away my favorite race in the entire game. I have a total of five trolls on Turalyon, two of them hunters.

   Gnomes are pretty close though for some odd reason.

10. @ all the people who play and/or roleplay Blood Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, etc. –

    You guys who can take the races I have a hard time playing and come up with awesome personalities and stuff for them? You guys are awesome. Just sayin’. <3

11. I love my female troll hunter… raised by Orcs… therefore everyone just stares when she opens her mouth. Hey, she loves pork roast, despises fish, and loves her frostwolf mount Moka. And her kitty Ruka.

    My female blood elf paladin? Loathes any type of walking corpse, will follow Lady Ladrin wherever commanded, loyal to her clan mates- even if they are of the walking corpse variety – though she wishes they’d at least wear some perfume or cologne or *something* to cover up that scent. She can refrain from handing out perfume and cologne, but she’s sorely tempted at times.

12. The funny thing is, you’ve made lots of aborted female orcs/dwarves that never go anywhere, and my highest level characters just so happen to be a female dwarf and a female orc.

    They are also a female dwarf hunter (this seems to be unusually popular among female dwarves, possibly because girls with big honking guns are fun for some reason), and a female orc warlock, by strange auguries.

    Very unusual.

13. The male draenei paladin sounds like an absolute blast. I don’t really roleplay, except in my own head, but you’re right about the draenei, they are quite difficult to articulate. I have a female draenei priest who would probably really well your pally because I decided she was an absolute drip. So she goes around in a dress, picking flowers and talking about how the stars are the light’s daisy chain (inspired by PG Wodehouse’ Madelaine Basset). And some of my heal spells are actually macro-ed to really drippy sayings like “Feel the goodness of the light upon your wounds.” Drives M’Pocket Tank mad 😉

14. I too have a love-hate relationship with the night elves (my main is a feral druid).

    I love them, because they’re not your boring stereotypical fantasy elves who are, often, little more than long-lived humans with pointy ears. They’re not tiny, delicate or soft. They are wild. They are tall and strong and proud. They are primal and spiritual and wise and deeply attuned to nature. They are savage enough to amaze Grom Hellscream. They have a long history, many secrets and great responsibility. They screwed up, Sundering and all but unlike almost every other “race” in WoW, they learned from it and bore the consequences by totally turning their society around, back to its roots, abandoning sorcery and nobility and delusions of imperial grandeur. And I love them because they are the only “race” with a tangible female presence and power.

    But, I suppose that may have doomed them.

    Females aren’t “cool”. They’re not “interesting”. They can, maybe, be support characters — but in the end what really matters is that they’re hawt and wear as little as possible so the real target audience has something to (pardon my language) wank off to.

    And that is why I hate the night elves. To be precise, I hate what Blizzard has done to them. They’re pinups with ridiculous animations. And their lore? Pretty much ignored and sidelined and forgotten. If they show up at all, they’re more likely to refer to the Light and serve in human armies and act as total vapid ditzes instead of being remotely, recognizably Kaldorei. They catalogue plant species instead of communing with the wilds. Their ferocious side? Totally gutted.

    If they show up at all, they have become generic fantasy elves, humans in funny suits. And that really saddens me. They should never have been included in the Alliance.

15. Tamarind – I love that way of looking at it “I don’t roleplay, except in my own head”. 🙂

    I struggle playing anything that isn’t a human, I have 2 night elves, as I had no other choice for my druid and for the hunter I couldn’t bring myself to play a dwarf (I tried). I do like them, but the ears freak me out a bit…

    I could never play a male character of any race, I have tried several times and they never go beyond level 5 – it just feels too weird. (Don’t get me started on how weird it is to raid with any of my husband’s female characters… 🙂 )

16. Pike, you said “@ all the people who play and/or roleplay Blood Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, etc. -”

    I haven’t had much opportunity to RP in WoW. When I first started I came to the game from heavy RP servers for NWN so I started playing WoW on an RP server. Though I quickly found out very few people actually RP, and the ones that did were, well, not captivating.

    But in NWN I always had so much fun RPing non-conventionally. I had dwarves, half orcs and half elves all of which had decidedly non-typical personas and it’s the best way to play. Whenever I had trouble I always thought “play against type” and it worked out great. Though when one does that it’s super fun to go and play to type now and again (I had a halfling rogue/bard that I loved playing so much and he was pretty much to type).

    While I’m a die-hard Horde player, I’d really like to sing my RP teeth into a Dwarf Priest or Paladin.

17. Personally, I cannot play a gnome or dwarf. I’ve tried, believe me I’ve tried, but the gnomes squeak and um, I hate being short. Seriously hate it.

    Undead are hard, I agree with you there. I ended up rolling a mage who used to be part of the Kirin Tor and a really powerful person. Now she can barely fireball. She’s not “destroy the living” she’s “try to kill me and I’ll set you on fire, but otherwise, live and let live. Wait, I’m not alive. Live and let unlive? What’s the verb for to continue existence as one of the undead? Well, you know what I mean.”

    I have to have a character in my head to enjoy playing the toon. I’m weird like that. Heck, my belf warlock has a backstory, a husband, and a bitter bitter soul with a side of power hunger despite not living on an RP server. And yes, she’s arrogant and aloof, but that’s mostly cause she’s bitter and disillusioned and people don’t like her blueberry.

18. BLOOD ELVES FTW

    I love Blood Elves!

19. Siiiigh. I’m tired of people always portraying the poor Blood Elves with a haughty attitude. It may be me, but their appearance doesn’t seem haughty (is it their voices? I’m deaf, so obviously, I can’t hear their voices).

    Instead, I actually respect them – I played Warcraft 3, and let me tell you, it’s really astounding how much of bad luck they had! Sheesh.

    That being said, I play on a regular PvE server. I’ve never roleplay, nor had I really given it much thought. But – I do come up with a small background for all of my most-played characters (female Tauren hunter, Forsaken mage, and Blood Elf warlock), and in the case of my Blood Elf, I imagine her as a reserved girl.

    (There’s no record of the lifespans of the Blood Elves; however, what is known that they’re no longer immune. Also, based on Sylvanas Windrunner’s comment in Warcraft 3 when Arthas was invading Quel’Thas – “I have waited and watched for centuries, knowing evil was not dead,” I assume that they live roughly half a millennium.)

    Why? Well, when she was at a young age – only fifty years old – the Second War erupted; she watched in horror as half of the enchanted forest of Quel’Thas burned and as the despised forest trolls, with the aid of the demonic orcs, slaughtered her family (only her sister and she escaped, thanks to the heroic efforts of the rangers led by Alleria Windrunner).

    And yet that was not the end of it – the High Elves’ great hero Alleria Windrunner disappeared into the Dark Portal along with the other great heroes, and the humans began to treat the Elves with contempt, despite them sending many of their rangers (which are women; I imagine that because the Night Elves are a female-dominated society, due to the men being in slumber for ten thousand years, and that because the High-and-Blood Elves were once one with the Night Elves, it made sense that they would retain the society; women are the warriors, men the healers and casters) to die for the humans, and despite them sharing the secrets of arcane arts with them.

    About twenty years later (so I guessed basing on Jaina Proudmoore and Thrall’s ages), a terrible plague began to run amok in the kingdom of Lordaeron. (I would love to go into my Forsaken mage’s story, but that’s not the one I’m telling now.) She didn’t know much – or hear anything of it, really, because the contact between the humans and the elves had been all but completely severed – but she did heard that Arthas had murdered his father (whom the elves respected; he, along with Uther Lightbringer and Daelin Proudmoore, treated the elves fairly) and was slowly advancing toward their beloved forest.

    She, along with her little sister, was living in a small village near the edge of the forest – right in the path of the Scourge. Fortunately, the rangers had come before the undead did; under Sylvanas Windrunner’s command, Vereesa Windrunner were assigned, along with a small group of rangers, to escort the villagers to safety (she regarded the Windrunner sisters with great respect – they had saved her sister and herself a number of times), and when they had reached Silvermoon – a trek that took two weeks – they heard the horrible news; Scourge had nearly reached the enchanted main gate!

    With this, Vereesa Windrunner – who were assigned to act in Sylvanas’s stead (the elves never were right without a Windrunner in charge) – began evacuating the men and children; it was a long, tedious process that took over a week. Blackstorm (my elf. Haven’t I mentioned her name?) and her sister were among the last children remaining when a runner, near death, rushed into Silvermoon with terrible heedings; Sylvanas Windrunner had fallen, and the Scourge are at Silvermoon’s gates.

    In a great hurry, the last children boarded the final boat along with Vereesa’s rangers and set off. The last thing they saw before Silvermoon disappeared below the horizon was the inky black smoke billowing toward the heavens and crackling flames.

    The boats arrived at Kul’Tinas’s great harbor, where the elves spilt into two – half of them exited with Jaina Proudmoore’s troops to Kalimdor, where they would establish Theamore, and the other half followed Prince Kael’Thas Sunstrider northward in slim hopes to reclaim some of their lands from the Scourge. The two sisters followed their prince; Vereesa Windrunner took her rangers to Dalaran.

    Unluck continued to rampage amongst the elves; as soon as they arrived at the edges of the former kingdom of Lordaeron, they met up with Lord Garithos, who was unbearably racist (really. He’s funny, though) and loathed the elves. Prince Kael’Thas assigned his people under Lord Garithos – he had the only real army for miles around – but the knight left them to die.

    Salvation arrived at the hand of Lady Vashj, however, who helped them escape the ravaged lands of Lordaeron and Quel’Thas. The naga sea witch led them to Outland – a land of magic paradise (ever since the destruction and corruption of the Sunwell at the hand of Arthas, the entire people had suffered the withdrawals – honestly, the Night Elves shouldn’t scorn them so much. They still have their Moonwell and their Tree of Life, Teldrassil), which Blackstorm and her sister relished.

    However, the two young sisters were uneasy with the direction Prince Kael’Thas was leading his people; they grouped up with other elves who shared their concern, and after Illidan Stormrage captured the Black Temple, they appealed to Prince Kael’Thas to allow them to leave. They knew that if their Prince knew the true reasoning, he would never allow them to go, so they came up with an excuse they knew would succeed – allow them return to Quel’Thas and recapture Silvermoon and restore the city to her former glory.

    Prince Kael’Thas was quick to grant his permission; under Illidan and Lady Vashj’s noses, they gathered together their best mages and departed Outland. The two sisters were among the many children that went with the adults – Prince Kael’Thas believed Outland to be more dangerous than Quel’Thas, and so he ordered the children to leave with them.

    So they began the long, hard process of retaking Silvermoon – imagine their horror, followed by relief, when a group of undead appeared and offered help – the Forsaken. Blackstorm and her sister were astounded, and grieved, to discover that their hero, Sylvanas Windrunner, is now one of the cursed undead.

    The Banshee Queen fought to have her former people accepted by the Horde – mainly because she knew what an asset they would be, though also because of the small affection that she still harbored for Silvermoon; she did died for it, after all.

    Blackstorm and her sister weren’t too happy to learn that they were expected to learn Orcish and work with the Horde. However, on her travels as a warlock – she had left her sister behind; her sister were still a child by their standards, and she had only just begun her training as a ranger – Blackstorm encountered a Tauren hunter, who was quick to accept the broken elf into her company along with a Forsaken mage.

    With this, came something she had never experienced among the humans: acceptance. The Tauren and the Forsaken showed no scorn toward her – even though she was a warlock and a Blood Elf – but instead offered her friendship.

    She still distrust the orcs and trolls, though the Tauren had introduced her to two Trolls – only did then she truly understood that they were island trolls, not forest trolls – and she found herself tolerating all of the Horde; she already even began to trust a select few.

    Still reserved – made even more so in the aftermaths of two horrible wars – she slowly began to feel comfortable with her inhuman allies. Regent Lor’themar Theron was indeed wise in siding the Blood Elves with the Horde. Even if the remaining High Elves were reunited with the Blood Elves – and Blackstorm prayed to the sun everyday that it would happen one day – and demand that they leave the Horde, she would never leave the Horde nor the two friends she have found in the Tauren hunter and the Forsaken mage.

    …What do you think? It’s not complete, I know, but I figured I’ll give you what I consider to be a real and accurate backstory for a Blood Elf (haughty? Haughty? Yes, they’re a bit racist – honestly, who aren’t in World of Warcraft? But they’re not haughty like pop stars or whatever. Compared even to gnomes or trolls, they have it hard; their king dead, two of their greatest heroes either missing or undead, about 90% of their entire race slaughtered… you get the idea).

20. @ Watermist – it is partially the voices. I have a difficult time separating the character from the voice, a known flaw of mine, and I sort of get that… vibe from the blood elf female voice!

    It is also partially the blood elf quest givers and NPCs I have come across in game. Many of them also seem to give off said “vibe” in the quest text. Not all of them, of course!

    As I said in a previous comment– I have tons of respect for people who can play blood elves well, because, well, I can’t! =P You definitely sound like you’ve put much more thought into your character than I have into any of mine, and I salute you for that. (I also salute you for playing Warcraft 3, I played a good portion of it but couldn’t get around the fact that the gameplay was not as good as StarCraft’s! Yes, I’m biased…)

21. Hehe, I <3 Trolls too. Especially the males. Mmmmmm.

    I love my Orc and Human characters actually, and would probably have a blast playing them on an RP realm if I ever bothered to transfer them. I think it goes back to when I played a lot more D&D then I do now and had the most fun messing around with Human characters. I think I enjoy it so much because with a "boring" race you have to focus so much more on the character, you can't just step back and let them be defined as "that chick with the bow and the pointy ears". I'm guilty of that with my Night Elf Hunter for sure–she's obsessed with Troll culture and loves raising little baby aminals, but so far as knowing her personality and what she'd do in any given situation…not so much.

    My Human Warrior, on the other hand…she's fun. 😀 Besides the whole thing with the Scarlet Crusade she had going for a while and her issues with undead, she pretty much ignores faction boundaries altogether. She's fine with Orcs–heck, she prefers them to Humans a lot of the time. She sees herself as having more common ground with other Warrior-y folks than with any specific race, even her own.

    My Orc Shaman, on the other hand, is pretty dedicated to the Horde–but she's got her own fun set of issues: She's a Dragonmaw Orc, and all those red dragons in Northrend she has to deal with? Verrry awkward. 😀 Eventually I'm going to have her deal with all that guilt by doing the Netherwing stuff on her, but first I have to earn her epic flying, so that'll be awhile.

    So with me, it's not so much playing to type or not, as finding what makes a character unique regardless of accepting or defying basic stereotypes.

    I really don't RP much, please don't stab me if I've horribly misused the terminology. <.<

22. I think my comment got eaten. T.T

    Anyway, version number two. =p

    <3 Trolls, especially the males. Mmmm…

    I don't actually think I'd enjoy RPing a Night Elf or Gnome because I tend to get lazy and let the race take over in terms of defining characteristics. The only thing that makes my Nelf Hunter stand out is her obsession with Trolls…her personality, other than that, is pretty much non-existent.

    With my Orc and Human characters, I have to work harder to find the unique points and highlight those, because there's not so much to work with to begin with. My Human Warrior is a fun character because she pretty much ignores faction boundaries in most cases–she gets along just fine with Orcs and such, better than with other Alliance races a lot of the time, simply because she sees herself as a Warrior first and a Human last. And that's besides her thing with the Scarlet Crusade and her issues with undead, and her wanting to be a Paladin and…eee, I have so much fun with her. My Orc Shaman doesn't have quite so much going on, but she's got her own issues–she's a Dragonmaw Orc, so all those quests for the red dragons in Northrend? Omgosh awkwardz and sooo fun to play out in my head. Eventually she'll deal with her massive guilt by helping out the Netherwing dragons but that'll have to be after I stop being lazy and buy her epic flight training.

    So for me, it's all about being able to ignore the race and focus on the individual. Totally know what you mean about some race/gender combinations feeling too "set" though, that's pretty much how I feel about Death Knights (as well as most of the classes in Warhammer online, which is why I never bothered to play after the first couple of days). They're just so flavor-heavy that it feels as if there's nothing I can do to make them my own, unique characters.

23. Okay, that’s twice I’ve tried to post a comment and twice that it’s vanished when I hit submit. So either something is eating them, or they’re going to mysteriously show up again at midnight two months from now with suspicious-looking scars, or I’m being a dork and missed a note about comments being moderated on here now and am going to look like an idiot when this one gets posted too.

    <.<

24. @ Kate – you aren’t putting a bunch of links in your comment are you? My spam filter eats those for dinner…

25. Never mind, found them in my filter. Why they were filtered I have no idea. It randomly acts up sometimes.

26. No links at all, just some scrambled eggs. 🙁

    Just talking about how I prefer playing the boring races like Orcs and Humans because I can’t be lazy and fall back on stereotypes the way I tend to do with Night Elves and Gnomes. All of them tend to be fairly normal for their races (given a broad definition of normal) but have little quirks and interesting histories that make them unique and fun. Like how my human warrior pretty much ignores faction boundaries because she considers herself a warrior first and a human second, and how my shaman is from the Dragonmaw clan which makes all those quests in Northrend with the red dragons hilariously awkward for her.

27. Ah, okay. Thanks for fixing them!

28. Ahhh, Starcraft truly is wonderful. I agree, it outshines Warcraft 3 in terms of awesomeness, but I’m a major lorenerd (also, don’t forgot the fact that I grew up watching Dad play Warcraft and Warcraft 2), so I highly enjoyed Warcraft 3 if only for the lore. ^^

    (Ahh, so it was the voice! Thanks for clarifying that. As for the quest givers, like I said, there’s racists and less-than-cool people everywhere in WoW… the NPCs, that is. ;D)

29. Hmm. It seems many people here “play against type” which I suppose means not using the basic characteristics of the character’s race (and maybe class). How come? Personally, when I pick a race/class I pick it at least partly because its traits fascinate me; I don’t find them stifling. For me, the fun in RP is making a character who has her own quirks and problems, but it also very recognizably of her race/class. I’m very much a fan of “themed” RP, too. And actually, so many people want to be “special” or “rebellious” or “different” that finding a paladin who actually knows the Three Virtues of the Holy Light, or a night elf who doesn’t live in Stormwind and likes warlocks and death knights more than her own people, can be quite hard.

    Or am I not understanding this right?

    Oh, and a wave and hug for Hulan. She plays lovely dwarves! 🙂

    (Night elves aside, I also like dwarves and draenei and especially tauren. Tauren are flat out awesome, though their size sure can make them feel slow and awkward when I just logged over from a smaller race.)

30. @ Feralan – that’s one of the reasons why I typically only RP in my head and not with others. =P I figure a lot of my RP elements will bug other people. XD

    For me anyway, I am this huge sucker for taking a character and making them prefer another race or people. Not enough that they entirely lose the elements of their original race, though, which puts them in a sort of odd half-and-half position. I do that with a lot (though certainly not all) of my characters. I’m always afraid people will find it cliche, though. So I sort of dislike roleplaying that part out in game. But I figured, it makes me happy, so what the heck, I’ll think it in my head.

31. Nice post, I really enjoyed reading it.

    I haven’t indulged in RP properly yet on WOW. I tried it once briefly but found that no one else seemed to really RP efficiently so I got rid of that lvl 10 char.

    In terms of races however, I know how I’d probably order them.

    For Horde, it’s Tauren, Orc, Undead, Troll, Belf
    For Ally, it’s Gnome, Dwarf, Draenei, Nelf, Human

    Overall order would just be putting the Horde races in between the gaps of the Ally races with Tauren before Gnome and so on…

    Hopefully, I can find somewhere to enjoy RP at some point possibly on WOW.

32. I can sum up my feelings on the wow races in one sentence:
    I moo at friends IRL.

    Ralowae and BlackTooth, Zangarmarsh

33. Tchann knows this very well: I am my server’s Troll Queen. Whenever a new Troll shows up in my guild OOC channel or the RP community’s channel there’s the assumption that it’s me – or I tell them to guess and they’re always like, “Hi Mat.”

    90% of my good character ideas are Troll males. The other 10% flit between female Trolls, Tauren and female Blood Elves. My Blood Elf Warlock is an overly curious “What does this do? How does it work?” type who is … dating a Troll. Elf dudes are nuts, she gave up on them a long time ago and the way the relationship developed was neat (I adore Troll/Elf pairings because of the potential conflicts). My duo Belfadins are sisters – one’s a scientist with delusions of grandeur/issues stemming from her boyfriend’s Death by Amani (and yet she’s managed to catch and experiment on one) while the other’s the lazy tomboy.

    My Trolls? Well, I could go on and on. Let’s just say they range the gambit from grumpy old soldier/father to shy young man that’s in a struggle with his sexuality to recovering drug addict sneaky-type to cocky markswoman. It’s a mixed bag (and the in-character journals are fun).

    If I don’t like how a character looks, I can’t play it, so I have a hard time with most male Humans, male Draenei, male Night Elves, male Gnomes, male Dwarves, Forsaken and male Orcs. Tauren of both genders are so fuzzy and adorable I wish I had more of ’em. I also admit to liking Night Elves but I have a hard time figuring out decent character ideas for ’em (not like my like/hatehatehate relationship with Orcs – this is aaall like).

    I really should be making a post in my blog, shouldn’t I? >.>

    TL;DR Roll a troll, you knoooooooow you wanna. … And get on convincing Blizz that Gnomes need moar class options. Tauren, too.

34. My first toon was a male Dwarf hunter named Venatas and though I am on a PvE server I played him just like a Dwarf Hunter, seldom in town (except for rested XP) often prefering the corner in the entry way than a bed upstairs. He swam/corpse crawled to Darnasus from Darkshore because the flightmaster wouldn’t fly him there and he was too shy/anti-scoial to talk to anyone and find out there was a boat. He always trys soloing group quests rather than ask anyone. In a raid he is quiet, listens to directions and does what he’s told. He is a skinner/miner not because it’s profitable but who could be a hunter without being a skinner or a dwarf without being a miner. Besides he is somewhat compulsive and hates waste. He hit 450 skinning in Borean Tundera before he hit 71 just skinning all the game that others left littered around. His only companion is Petard, not the most cunning ghostsaber, but faithful too a fault. Petard was named Cat from level 17 clear until level 70 because once you named your pet you couldn’t change it. His pet earned his name in LBRS when they were soloing it to get the key and grind rep with the Thorium Brothhood because Venatas had dark iron scraps in the bank and didn’t want to waste them. He sent Petard after the mob right in front of them but Petard got confused and thought he meant one of the half dozen mobs, that neither of them could see, in the room at the end of the hallway. (how tab targeting works this way I have yet to understand) Before he couild be called back he’d aggroed more opportunity than either of them could handle. Petard was originally meant to be a play on Huntard but a friend pointed out it is actually a real word that is amazing appropriate. Petard has hoisted Venatas more times than either of them care to remember.

    After watching all the fun I was having, my wife wanted to play to and so I got her an RAF account and she rolled a Gnome mage named Gnorma. It didn’t make sense that she and Venataas would ever get together and besides I had triple XP so I rolled a Gnome warlock named Gnolan. I originally choose warlock because it seemed so much like a hunter. Luckily Gnolan and Gnorma were able to enlist Venatas’ help to speed the killing spree necessary to get to 60 before the triple XP expired. It was a very pragmatic agreement. Gnorma was leveling herbalism and alchemy so Venatas would eventually have a ready source of flasks for raiding. Gnolan was inscription/enchanting so he’d be able to convert all the useless greens he kept finding into something more useful. When they reached 60, Gnolan was still wearing his level 1 robe and hadn’t spent a single talent point. He went to Stormwind, bought a full set of greens, specced Destro (essentially SV) and began learning the ropes. I’ve since grown to appreciate the differences between hunters and warlocks. With no feign death, Gnolan has to be far more calculated and subtle than Venatas ever needed to be.

    Both Gnolan and Gnorma are obseessively helpful. Gnorma never fails to summon mage tables, buff arcane brilliance and hand out mana pots like candy. Aside from the multiple summon stones, soul wells and soul stones, Gnolan has even been known to keep unending breath and detect invisibility up on the whole raid just because he can.

    Like you I would love to have a Gnome hunter but my warlock is a great alternative.

35. @Matojo: “If I don’t like how a character looks, I can’t play it, […]”

    Oh boy, yes. Agreed, this locks me out of certain types of charactrs too even if it was interested in their lore. Gnomes are one example — they look like toddlers with boobs or beards to me. Forsaken are another. I love their rotten, ugly faces, but the way gear looks on them puts me off.

    Luckily for me, I usually like both the way a race looks (at least the females; I don’t play males) and its lore. Or dislike both, as the case may be. :p The exception are female night elves. Love their lore, HATE their animations and many of their babyfaces. If it was up to me they’d be animated more like orc women, who are kickass.

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