Posts tagged race changes
Avatars
Jan 14th
The relationships we have with our characters. Are they just pixels? Or do we feel more of an attachment to them? And is it right that others should treat us as just avatars?
I personally get quite attached to my characters. A very good example is Fae’s orc race change. I did it because I wanted a change, I was bored of looking at my character screen and seeing a pile of blood elves, so I decided orc. Nice racials and they do look cool in Fae’s gear. The problem is, I convinced myself it was the right thing to do rather than actually thinking about it. For those 3 days I barely played my character, when I did it was because I was asked to relog. She wasn’t Fae anymore, as awesome as she looked, I missed Fae the blood elf and on top of that, I felt really guilty for wasting all of that money.
In the same breath, if I don’t particularly like a character, I won’t grow attached to it. Take my warlock. I made her pre-TBC, so the only horde races she could be were orc or undead. I chose the one which looked most.. “normal” in my eyes, the undead. As I saw more and more blood elves running around, including my own, I couldn’t like her. That along with at the time I didn’t enjoy the warlock class, and I felt pretty stupid that I couldn’t dps on her. So, as you all know I assume, I switched her to blood elf after reaching 80, threw a name change at her too, and now I have an attachment to her.
Don’t get me wrong though, although I have an army of blood elves, they aren’t my favourite race. That’s purely because I’ve always played horde on Vashj-EU, because of the people there. When on Terenas, I play alliance. Alliance have humans, night elves, and draenei. I absolutely love draenei, I just hate their starting zone and it’s a struggle for me to get much further than level 8. There’s something about alliance I like, their races are better, in my opinion, their mounts are better, even their cities and starting zones are, in general, better. I’ve just always played horde and this is where my odd attachment to cows, Orgrimmar, and wolf mounts comes in.
At the end of the day though, aren’t they just pixels? Well yes. They are, of course. We as gamers put so much time and effort into our characters that sometimes it feels as though they aren’t just pixels, but they are. I’ve never played on an RP realm before, and I don’t really know what it’s like to. I’ve heard they aren’t as full of RP as you might expect, but the RPers out there, I’ll assume, have a little more of an attachment to their characters. Not only do they gear them, get achievements, collect mounts and pets, they have a backstory, making the characters just a little more real. I’ve always considered creating backstories for my characters, but aside from putting them here they’d go to waste.
Sometimes you might notice people will treat you as just another avatar. If you have less than 5k gear score, and barely any raid achievements, then you obviously don’t deserve to be treated like a person playing a game, but just a bunch of pixels, right? In my opinion, some people need to remember that there are people behind the avatars, and sometimes people are hurt by being treated this way.
The Week #9
Jan 10th
The past week I haven’t really been playing Fae much. I’ve logged in to do her random daily heroic for the Frost Emblems, pugged a Flame Leviathan 10 for the weekly raid quest, aside from that I’ve been quite determined to level my warlock.
A little background on my warlock: She was my first character. I made her.. I think the September before TBC was released, so at the time I could be an undead or an orc. I chose undead. At about level 27 ish, I noticed everybody had “words in front of their names” so when I asked my friend where to get this, he said PvP. I joined a WSG and made myself a Scout which I was perfectly happy with, not understanding PvP at all at this point (not much has changed, let’s be fair). She would have been about level 40 when TBC hit, I levelled very slowly, with college, social life, and other alts to sort out as well. When TBC hit and I noticed how many 70s were around I became determined and at about 62, a group of guildies helped me with the Dreadsteed quest. It was very hard at this point and took about 10 minutes, and my God I was proud of that mount. She was my first character to 70 and I quit her 2 months after she hit 70 to play a priest instead. She is now my 6th level 80.
The problem with Scout Hadlo being an undead is purely that I don’t really like playing undead. The only horde race I like is blood elf, and I guess tauren. After a shitty hour of being PvPed in Nagrand, helping a friend with Ring of Blood, I decided finally I’d race change to blood elf and eventually decided to change her name from Hadlo, to something much more comfortable: Jaedia. I’m now much more attached to the character, I love that she is Scout Jaedia, and in fact, Destruction feels like a very similar playstyle to Spiritmasters in Aion, which was the class I played and loved to bits. Anyway, I do have a bit of link love this week.
I’d really like to promote a few new blogs today. I have 3 I’d like to share with you.
- Random Rogue – I love her theme to bits. It’s bright, colourful, and very happy. I like that, and also the idea behind the blog. Just another random rogue pugging her way through the levels. I find that a nice fresh new idea for blogging.
- Marks-365 – I think I found Morynne’s hunter blog from a comment on another blog. Curious I had a look and I loved reading her blog, chatting on Twitter, and watching it grow.
- The Spirit Beast – A beautifully designed brand new blog for BM hunters. I can’t wait to see it improve and grow
I really do need to get upto date on my reader. I couldn’t bear to go through everything after Christmas and have still barely touched on it, sorry guys, I will read your stuff! Though, I have managed to get upto date on a few.
I really love Pike’s WoW-Related Things I Have Drawn Lately post. I love looking at other people’s art, whether it be doodles or oil paintings or the other awesome stuff inbetween. These are so cute I had to share.
This week I have come across 2 bloggers who word what I was trying to say in my post about elitists much better than I could. The first being Arioch of Clearcasting, and the second Saresa of Destructive Reach.
There’s an awesome guide for raiding shadow priests up at Lucky Lurky this week, nice to see you posting again Ben!
Last but by no means least, big congratulations to Naithin! Wish you guys all the best and Cristel’s dress is really pretty 
Orcified…
Dec 3rd
Why did I make my character look like this when I love elves so much? DPS. I don’t like it, but I’m gonna have to test it out now, some fucking awesome racials is the problem but my God, not sure I want to log in.. feels wrong.
Faction Change Guide
Sep 24th
I was personally excited to hear about Faction Change and Race Change services Blizzard announced to be implemented. Now that Faction Changes are available in the US and EU, I decided to lay down the basics.
First of all, these do not include a free server transfer and you can only change one character’s faction in one payment. Now that PvP realms allow you to have both Horde and Alliance on the same server, there are no server limitations. The only thing you are limited to is races, for hunters (see ‘Racials‘), for example, you cannot switch from an Orc to a Gnome. This service comes with character customisation and an optional character name change. If you want to eventually change back to your original faction, you may choose a different race to the one you originally chose. Though bear in mind, Blizzard are working on race changes.
Faction specific items will be switched. You will not lose anything in the process. This includes, but is not limited to, gear, vanity pets, mounts, achievements, titles, reputation (a full list of faction counterparts can be found here). All quests and quest items will be reset, though restored if switched back to original faction. If, for example, you have completed every quest in Storm Peaks, you will keep the achievement, however, you will be able to redo the quests for money. Items which are not faction specific, i.e. Food and water, will be unaffected by the change.
Friends lists, ignore lists, guilds and arena teams, as expected, will be reset. You will be able to keep your earnt honour, arena points, marks, emblems, however pending arena points may be lost in the transaction. Bear in mind if you have any pending auctions or mail in your inbox that this will block the faction change. For a level 80 character, the gold limit is 20,000g, be sure to leave any additional on other characters or with friends if you’re feeling generous.
Another thing I have been lead to believe, as with a server transfer, any saved instances will be reset. If you cleared Ulduar on a Wednesday and faction changed on the Thursday, you should be able to clear it again before the end of the week. Though please don’t quote me on this.
More interesting Cataclysm updates
Aug 22nd
- The Cataclysm will be released after Icecrown Citadel, not only with the date but also lore-wise.
- The dances we were told were coming with Wrath are still being worked on…
- Once faction changes have been sorted, they are planning on implementing race changes, which would mean a Blood Elf Paladin could switch to a Tauren, for example.
- They may be adding the ability to reorder the characters on the character sheet, thank God I’ve wanted this one for a while xD
- The guild levelling system being discussed will enable you to create guild heirlooms. You’ll be able to buy profession plans with this and anyone in your guild can wear the item, and it scales with level.
- In order to ensure enhancement shamans and hunters are able to share the same gear, Blizzard will try to give enhancements similar talents to those given to rets in order for them to use the same gear.
- In 3.3 they’re talking about pets scaling from all hunter stats and also allowing buffs from raid encounters to affect them (uh oh I smell nerfs inc already…)
- Also in 3.3, they’re planning to make it so that pets can’t be hit by boss AoEs but others (i.e. PvP) can affect them.
Source: World of Raids.
Zalazane's Fall
Brew of the Year
Isle of Conquest Victory
A-bomb-inable
Stocking Up
Operation: Gnomeregan
Master of Arms
Plenty of Pets
Looking For Multitudes
A Void Dance
