Monday, May 18, 2009

Life On The Other Side

Time for a little confession. I've been dabbling in playing Horde toons recently.

When I first played WoW I played several toons, Alliance and Horde to level 10 of various classes. I ended up picking Night Elf Hunter because of the class and just took off from there. Elionene was born and the rest is history so they say. But there were a lot of elements of the Horde characters that I enjoyed. I just never went back to experience them. Until now.

I always thought the Tauren were a cool race. The male toons in particular were just massive. Something that screamed Warrior! But I never did create a Tauren warrior since I played Alliance toons and such, and never felt like it was worth the time to go level a brand new toon from scratch. Well with the Death Knight option available now, I decided to roll a Tauren Death Knight. Very similar to a Warrior in terms of size and gear and such, but with a slightly darker concept. And so I created Ansam.

Ansam is a Tauren Death Knight, fresh out of the DK starter area. I plan to take him into Outland soon, but for now I'm just happy to have finished the DK experience with Ebon Hold. It was a lot of fun. The character concept is fairly mundane and simple, but sometimes I like basic origins. Ansam was once a simple farmer and herbalist from the plains of Mulgore. But the times and circumstance led him to battle for his people as a Warrior against the Centaur and other enemies. Unfortunately for Ansam, he was felled in a battle against the encroaching undead of the Lich King. But his prowess as a warrior did not go unnoticed and he was raised to serve as an unwilling slave to Arthas.

He will be Frost specced, and I plan to have him be a tank. The Frost is sort of a juxtaposition of where Ansam came from. Once a warm caring person who lived off the land and cultivated it to grow, now he is a cold and dark version of his former self. He remembers his past, but knows that he cannot go back to it. Now he is driven to fight against the forces that turned him into what he is, so that perhaps he can prevent it happening to anyone else.

Aside from Ansam, I've always been very intrigued with the story of the Forsaken. Humans turned into Scourge, but who have broken away from the Lich King's power by sheer will power. Now free, they still harbor resentment towards the Scourge and the "Living." Do all Forsaken hate the living though? Do any wish to return to be alive? Or at least to leave well enough alone? So I created an Undead Priest, named Taerv. He's level 10 now, which I've gotten to before on an undead priest, but this time I'm going to continue playing him a little at a time to see some of the Forsaken stories play out in the starter zones.

Last night right before I logged off, I walked into the Inn at Brill and found it to be fairly lively with people role playing. Someone was running the bar, and others were standing around talking. I sat by the fire and tried to warm my hands, but was unable to because I was dead. A blood elf nearby offered me a substance to warm me up, and I took it, and it gave me hallucinations of my family that I lost when the scourge overran our village.

All of this was of course made up on the spot random role playing. Something that I don't do often on my alliance characters because I'm so busy preparing for raids or running dailies. It was kind of nice to break away from the grind and just do something random and fun. It wasn't long drawn out role play, which I find tedious sometimes, but it was spontaneous and enjoyable.

Of the rest of the Horde races, I enjoy the orcs the most and created an Orc Warlock. I'd like to explore playing an Orc that still follows the ways of Gul'dan and doesn't believe that the Horde should go back to the old ways of Shamanism. For some reason, the trolls never interested me. I'm not sure if it's because we're already inundated with troll stuff in questing and dungeons or what. I did make a troll Shaman though. Not sure what her story will be. And of the Blood Elves, I liked what they did with them through BC and the Sunwell, but I've not had a huge interest in playing them. The race seems to be sort of stuck up and selfish as a whole, and I already play that somewhat into Elionene, though less selfish, and just more stuck up. I did create a Blood Elf Mage though. If anything, I'd play up the addiction to the magic and a mage is a great class to do that with.

I'm not completely switching over though. These horde toons are just a once in a while chance to explore some other characters. I still need to flesh out my main toons such as Salther and Khristin as well. All in good time.

Until then, have a good morning.

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