Cataclysm

[Nevermore]

I hope this doesn't mean they'll change Draenai totems into goofy looking crystals.

[Mattemeo]

I thought the Draenei totems were already unique, no?

[Nevermore]

Hmm, you're right.  I guess that comment about Tauren not wanting to share must have been directed at Goblin/Orc/Troll totems.

[Bzalthek]

We don't talk about Blood Elves, k?

How can you not? There are more blood elves than there are orcs and tauren combined. Night Elves aren't even quite the most popular Alliance race.

You guys are basically the Blood Elf faction. 

That's because the Blood Elves are former fucking alliance.  Pre-BC, Alliance was a repository of retardation.  Now that Horde has a wankable, emo race, both sides fester with lead-paint-chip-eating assbags.  I can only hope the introduction of furries draws them back away from the Horde.

Not that I'm playing anymore, but I'm sure I will come expansion.

[Ratman_tf]

That's because the Blood Elves are former fucking alliance.  Pre-BC, Alliance was a repository of retardation.  Now that Horde has a wankable, emo race, both sides fester with lead-paint-chip-eating assbags.  I can only hope the introduction of furries draws them back away from the Horde.

Not that I'm playing anymore, but I'm sure I will come expansion.

Both sides have always festered with wankers. Don't blame Horde dipshittery on bloofs.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I know for a fact 50% of all paladins on my server will switch to tauren within 5 minutes of race switching.

[Mattemeo]

That's because the Blood Elves are former fucking alliance.  Pre-BC, Alliance was a repository of retardation.  Now that Horde has a wankable, emo race, both sides fester with lead-paint-chip-eating assbags.  I can only hope the introduction of furries draws them back away from the Horde.

Not that I'm playing anymore, but I'm sure I will come expansion.

It's like a textbook example of the incredible For the Horde! mindset - part nihlistic (self-imposed) underdog, part false-sense of entitlement elitist, part delusional dipshit. The Horde is full of fuckwits, and they were full of fuckwits before BElfs ever came along. Alliance players already know they have a high fuckwit ratio, they just get on with it and don't piss and moan like a bunch of retarded monkeys who think rolling the 'ugly' race makes them some kind of fucking unique snowflake! 

Seriously. Barrens Chat. Barrens fucking Chat. There is no greater example of asshatery in all of MMOgaming.

[Rasix]

Seriously. Barrens Chat. Barrens fucking Chat. There is no greater example of asshatery in all of MMOgaming.

Sure there is. AV chat.  Last few times in Barrens I was either able to shame or stun them into silence. AV chat is just relentless verbal diarrhea in stark contrast to people actually trying to play.  

There was a time that I'd argue that Alliance had all of the kiddies, bads and assholes, but that time is long, long past.  Just taking a look at the server forums, horde has the backstabbing, drama, ninjaing, and trolling market cornered.  A combination of blood elf rerolls, guild rerolls to Horde, and the allure of evil death knights has weakened the Horde while stabilizing the population of the alliance.  This isn't pre-BC anymore where night elf hunters out number any single horde race.  Those people are all gone (at least it seems like that) save a few.  It's hard to even find someone with a knowledge of MC or BWL.

Horde for me wasn't even a choice. Old school Horde side competitive Warcraft 2 player combined with a like for non-human races and a hatred of elves.  If I were to start anew, my choice of side might be different. My active character is a blood elf and I'm not as bothered by it as I should be.  Would prefer it to be undead or an orc, but continuing with a character that was already past the annoying levels was a bigger draw for me than overcoming my disdain for elf ears.  

edit: Barrens chat cannot even hold a candle to Lake of Ill Omen chat from EQ.  That shit was legendary.

[Zetor]

Even before BC [and in the heyday of the 'pre-teen night elf hunter' stereotype], the average age of alliance players was higher than that of the horde, if Nick Yee's metrics are to be trusted, that is [edit: cba to find the link right now, but it's within the daedalus project somewhere]. IMO both sides suck, and have always sucked.

I hope this doesn't mean they'll change Draenai totems into goofy looking crystals.

They need to change the Searing Totem to have a protoss photon cannon model, and the fireball it shoots should look like a photon cannon shot too, imo! Also, gnome shaman >>>>>>>>>> dwarf shaman.

[Jayce]

This thread has gone from zero to deliver in one page.

[Sjofn]

Seriously. Barrens Chat. Barrens fucking Chat.

This was always my counter to "lol u play alliance their dum" crap. The example held up and known to all of a completely fucktarded general chat? Barrens chat.

[Righ]

I really wish that a group of Orcs would break away from the wimpy Horde and give us a third faction. I would be okay with being ganked by both Alliance and Horde while leveling up a character that could kill all elves. I'm pretty sure that a third faction would attract lots of immature assholes, but they've never really bothered me on either side since I always make a chat tab called 'Wibble' and send all public channels to it. Other than guild chat and the odd spam whisper my time in WoW is fairly peaceful.

My observation is that historically (pre-BC) Alliance tended to have a lower proportion of dribbling idiots, except on role-playing servers where the opposite was true. I think that Blizzard managed to balance (fuck) the factions sufficiently that there is no escape from legions of idiots today, no matter what flavor or age of server you pick.

[sickrubik]

I've never spent much time on the Horde Side of things (I think my highest horde is 20), but I shudder to think how bad something like Barrens Chat really is, given how horrible the general and trade lines can be in towns. For the most part those seem to be filled with jackasses that seem to think it's actually Tradechan. I just assume the internet is 95% asshat.

[kildorn]

Barrens chat, back in the day, would be the equivalent to Something Awful IRC, without the funny. Oh, and throw in a few dozen frat boys. And heaven forbid if a GIRL showed up on local.

Seriously, it was atrocious. Post TBC, it migrated heavily to the BE starter zones I've been told. Dear god though, barrens chat.

[AutomaticZen]

Even before BC [and in the heyday of the 'pre-teen night elf hunter' stereotype], the average age of alliance players was higher than that of the horde, if Nick Yee's metrics are to be trusted, that is [edit: cba to find the link right now, but it's within the daedalus project somewhere]. IMO both sides suck, and have always sucked.

Here's the images in question.  Old data though.


They found some other things like the average age for female players is higher than the average age for male players.

And Warcraft Realms lists the average ratio across all US realms for Alliance:Horde is 1.1:1.  Worldwide, Humans still edge out Blood Elves as the most popular race, followed closely by Night Elves.  The most popular class is Death Knight, followed by Paladin.  Lowest player race is the Trolls, with the lowest class being the Shaman.

[Ingmar]

What's important is that Midgard has the best players. 

[Nebu]

They found some other things like the average age for female players is higher than the average age for male players.

And Warcraft Realms lists the average ratio across all US realms for Alliance:Horde is 1.1:1.  Worldwide, Humans still edge out Blood Elves as the most popular race, followed closely by Night Elves.  The most popular class is Death Knight, followed by Paladin.  Lowest player race is the Trolls, with the lowest class being the Shaman.

How the hell could they know this stuff accurately?  I've been playing this game off and on since beta and I don't think I've ever given personal information beyond billing... and for most players, billing information has nothing to do with who controls the toons.

Surveys, while interesting, rely on the honesty of the participant.  I am too skeptical to believe much of anything from surveys.  Similarly, I'd argue that people willing to give Blizzard these data don't comprise a truly random subset of the gaming populous anyway.  

[AutomaticZen]

They found some other things like the average age for female players is higher than the average age for male players.

And Warcraft Realms lists the average ratio across all US realms for Alliance:Horde is 1.1:1.  Worldwide, Humans still edge out Blood Elves as the most popular race, followed closely by Night Elves.  The most popular class is Death Knight, followed by Paladin.  Lowest player race is the Trolls, with the lowest class being the Shaman.

How the hell could they know this stuff accurately?  I've been playing this game off and on since beta and I don't think I've ever given personal information beyond billing... and for most players, billing information has nothing to do with who controls the toons.
 
Surveys, while interesting, rely on the honesty of the participant.  I am too skeptical to believe much of anything from surveys.  Similarly, I'd argue that people willing to give Blizzard these data don't comprise a truly random subset of the gaming populous anyway.

The Nick Yee stuff is survey based.

Warcraft Realms is an addon you can download that consistently spams /who 'category' while you're online and then sends the data to their site.  It's as close as we'll get to 'real' numbers unless Blizzard starts letting us search the Armory for that info.

[kildorn]

What's important is that Midgard has the best players. 

Now if only they could congregate in groups of more than 8 without going all lord of the flies.

[Jayce]

I think the Nick Yee survey was the one I took, which was that if you visited his site or subscribed to his RSS feed, he asked you to take a quick survey. 

Of course it's not truly random since the audience is self-selecting, but presumably if you were following the project you found it interesting enough not to shit up the data too much, at least.

[Xanthippe]

Barrens chat, back in the day, would be the equivalent to Something Awful IRC, without the funny. Oh, and throw in a few dozen frat boys. And heaven forbid if a GIRL showed up on local.

Seriously, it was atrocious. Post TBC, it migrated heavily to the BE starter zones I've been told. Dear god though, barrens chat.

You've just perfectly described trade chat on Korgath Alliance. I remember Barrens chat from launch (Durotan Horde) and believe me, it was nowhere near as bad as the trade chat I hear now. 

Now, it's as though the GMs have no bansticks.  People used to have at least a modicum of discretion, but now?  None at all.

Yesterday, I reported a guy for describing how he was fucking his girlfriend.  On trade chat.  Either it took the GMs a half hour to deal with it, or he logged off. 

[Fordel]

Doomhammer trade chat is fairly tame for the most part, just lots of Ascii art.

[Simond]

The best part of /2 is trolling it.

[Fordel]

Might as well shoot fish in a barrel.

[Merusk]

Surveys, while interesting, rely on the honesty of the participant.  I am too skeptical to believe much of anything from surveys.  

You trust political polls with a much smaller sampling size : population ratio, right?  If 3,000 random people out of 300 million+ can be an accurate measure of political will, how could a similar number of respondents out of a population 1/150th the size be more wildly inaccurate?   Nick did a Doctorate on this shit, I trust he knows enough about self-selection and other problems usually associated with internet polls.

[LK]

The Garrosh / Varian thing represents the Warcraft status quo: no matter how stupid the development, no matter how fucking illogical a character's actions may be, no matter how much you want such and such to die and who SHOULD die, it must always be Alliance vs. Horde. Even though Thrall is effectively an Orc GOD, he will be phased out over Garrosh so the Horde can be more aggressive and think they have some rightful claim to the entirety of Azeroth instead of learning to co-habitate, which will naturally put them at odds with the Alliance. The Alliance aren't exactly angels either but...

Fuck Horde.

[AutomaticZen]

The Garrosh / Varian thing represents the Warcraft status quo: no matter how stupid the development, no matter how fucking illogical a character's actions may be, no matter how much you want such and such to die and who SHOULD die, it must always be Alliance vs. Horde. Even though Thrall is effectively an Orc GOD, he will be phased out over Garrosh so the Horde can be more aggressive and think they have some rightful claim to the entirety of Azeroth instead of learning to co-habitate, which will naturally put them at odds with the Alliance. The Alliance aren't exactly angels either but...

Fuck Horde.

The best part is, looking at all the Cataclysm changes they've shown us, Horde seems to be doing rather well for itself.

We look forward to eating your babies.

(I'm conflicted now I have an Alliance character)

[Nebu]

You trust political polls with a much smaller sampling size : population ratio, right?  If 3,000 random people out of 300 million+ can be an accurate measure of political will, how could a similar number of respondents out of a population 1/150th the size be more wildly inaccurate?   Nick did a Doctorate on this shit, I trust he knows enough about self-selection and other problems usually associated with internet polls.

You make an excellent point, but I still don't trust any poll.  Most polling places don't even understand the statistics nor psychology involved to make the conclusions that they do.  Also, most poll-based pseudoscience produces an R^2 barely above 60%.  I don't find this kind of "evidence" conclusive of anything other than a mood.  While I will confess that I was in a pissy mood when I wrote that AND that Yee is a very smart individual whom I think produced as valid a piece of work as is possible to obtain.

Dewey defeats Truman. 

[kaid]

I seriously wish there was some big arena where we could throw garrosh, wyrnn, staghelm and meh maybe sylvana into it lock the door throw away the key and never let them out ever again.

The alliance rulers other than tyrande and maybe the dwarf leader are a buch of flaming dipshits. The horde current leaders before they throw garrosh at least have sensible behavior if not ideal in the case of the forsaken.

God having to deal with staghelm as a druid and now with mr emo pants in stormwind makes me want to turn green and start slaughtering humies.

[apocrypha]

Most polling places don't even understand the statistics nor psychology involved to make the conclusions that they do. 

Most polling places understand the statistics and psychology very well an use that knowledge to get the result that the people paying for the poll want 

[Sjofn]

God having to deal with staghelm as a druid and now with mr emo pants in stormwind makes me want to turn green and start slaughtering humies.

For whatever reason, I love Staghelm. But I still hate King Over 9000. I think it's because Staghelm is a bitch, but the times he's a bitch to me, he sort of has a point. He has shit to do, why AM I bugging him with my little flask of moonwell water? Also he thinks Tyrande is an idiot, which she is, so I like him 'cause he's willing to say so. 

King Chin just smolders with generic rage and that's boring.

[Nevermore]

For whatever reason, I love Staghelm. But I still hate King Over 9000. I think it's because Staghelm is a bitch, but the times he's a bitch to me, he sort of has a point. He has shit to do, why AM I bugging him with my little flask of moonwell water?

We're bugging him with that little flask of moonwell water because maybe if he'd stop to look at it he'd see that the shit he thinks he has to do is fucking everything up.  Also, apparently that super important shit he spends so much time doing is collecting morrowgrain to feed what looks to be a pretty severe addiction to the stuff.

[Ingmar]

Staghelm = awesome. By all rights he should be the Alliance's Saurfang.

[Sjofn]

We're bugging him with that little flask of moonwell water because maybe if he'd stop to look at it he'd see that the shit he thinks he has to do is fucking everything up.  Also, apparently that super important shit he spends so much time doing is collecting morrowgrain to feed what looks to be a pretty severe addiction to the stuff.

Yeah, but who the fuck are we to bug him with it? Some kid who is probably thousands of years younger than him. What the fuck do we know? If it was really that earthshatteringly important, wouldn't one of his druids, the ones he's been chilling with for a long damn time, bug him instead? I'm not saying he's right, I'm saying he has a fucking point. All the times he's totally bitchy to me, I'm some low level nobody bugging him with seemingly random bullshit. He's "nicer" (condescending but not flat out dismissive) at the higher levels when I tell him about the moonkin and shit. Which he already knew about. But hey, it's cool I know about it now too, have a quest reward.

[AutomaticZen]

Staghelm = awesome. By all rights he should be the Alliance's Saurfang.

Your Saurfang would be Tirion.  Fucker cleansed the Ashbringer by touch. 

Staghelm is a dick and possibly a druggie.  The non-dick Night Elf leader would be Tyrande.  I'm not counting Malfurion because he's a damn super hippy that can't be bothered to rock it with his woman.