One of my goals to achieve before Cataclysm hits is to make sure I’ve seen everything the World of Warcraft has to offer, because once it’s gone, it’s gone forever. Now I’m well on my way there, having always been a natural in-game explorer and lore-hunter. However, the areas I haven’t really seen much of are the low-level zones, especially for those races that I’ve never rolled a character on. So I have set myself a challenge: to roll a character of every single race and thoroughly explore their starting zones. Also, starting zones are an area Blizzard is strongly looking at with regard to the next expansion, so I thought it would be fun to review the experiences I had with each starter zone, and see how they currently compare. I’ll be reviewing each race’s zone in turn, but as a long-term dedicated Horde player I thought it would interesting to start with the complete unknown: the Alliance zones. First up – the Humans!
Now in rolling a Human I was breaking a long-standing practice of mine, which is to NEVER roll a Human character in a computer game. As a race they have simply never appealed in any context. I am in actual fact, a Human, so playing on in a game would be a pretty pathetic effort at escapism. However this was my self-assigned task so into it I went. I rolled a female toon, because I’ve been finding female characters appealing lately. There aren’t enough ass-kicking heroines in the worlds, fictional or otherwise, so I like to create them. I gave her a cool hairdo, some piercings and made her a Warlock, mostly because Warlock is the only class I have never played. Her name? Shylocke.
So my first impressions upon materialising in the forested village of Northshire were that it was more cutesy and picturesque than anywhere I had seen on Azeroth before. The place has the feel of a sleepy village in southern France, with its lush green fields, birds singing in the trees, flowers all over the place and large pretty church slap-bang in the middle of it all. I felt… safe, at peace. It was most unsettling.
I was also a bit confused as to what my role was. In the Horde zones I am more familiar with there was a clear function to where I was, such as the Orcish Valley of Trials. Shylocke however mostly just seemed to be hanging around Northshire working on her tan. Nevermind, a few starter quests sorted that out. For what appeared to be a sleepy village was in fact a hotbed of activity… kind of. I immediately found myself fighting some very sickly wolves and hordes of Kobolds… well very small Kobolds! Seriously these things were tiny, almost adorable in their patheticness. I felt bad setting fire to them, but reassured myself that they must be some kind of evil menace. I mean, the Stormwind militia wouldn’t ask me to kill helpless little creatures… would it?
On the whole I found Northshire very bland. All I did was kill Kobolds and deal with some Defias thieves who had, in their most dastardly fiendishness, stolen some grapes. Yeah, that’s right, grapes. My main task was to get them back, a job that was extremely simple since the Defias weren’t even hostile to me, they just let me walk in and reclaim the stolen grapes. They hadn’t even eaten any. I took them back to the church, where an alcoholic monk thanked me and gave me a rag he’d spilt his wine on as a reward. This was hardly action-packed so far and I found myself longing for a Burning Blade cultist to stab!
I left sleepy old Northshire at level 4 and moved onto Goldshire, hoping to find more of a challenge. What I found instead was debauchery. Goldshire Inn, despite it’s annoyingly cheery music, is clearly a place for finding ladies of dubious virtue rather than a quiet pint. The place was crammed from wall to wall with Night Elf ladies wearing a variety of Santa costumes and bikinis. Clearly the ‘RP’ tag on my sever refers only to the kinkier forms of ‘roleplay’. Within moments of entering the place I received a number of quite frankly unhygienic propositions.
Carefully navigating my way through the minefield of Elvish cleavage, I managed to acquire a number of new quests, which once again involved the slaughter of the local Kobold populations. At this point I really started to become appalled with the immorality of the quest-givers, and the extreme speciesism held by humans towards the innocent Kobolds. One man had heard that Kobolds often dig up gold in a nearby mine, so he paid me to kill them and steal it as part of a get-rich-quick scheme. Another guy was looking to buy candles for his Apothecary shop in Stormwind. Rather than just buying some candle wax himself, his elegant solution was to – you guessed it – kill the Kobolds and steal their precious candles. Seriously, this guy thinks the best way to acquire household items is the mass slaughter of an indigenous population? And the Alliance calls the Horde the evil ones…
Whilst inside Goldshire Inn is nothing but sex and murder, outside is once again disgustingly cheery and happy. It’s like Disney and the Easter Bunny had a baby: flowers and kittens are everywhere. Ultimately I became sickened by the double standards all around me. Cutesy happiness everywhere as a perverted cover-up for prostitution and murder. A ridiculously cute cartoon cow happily wandered past me and in my disgusted rage I killed it.
Ultimately I realise that in order to level up, I was going to have to follow my quest and massacre the local Kobolds. Those despicable Goldshire scum have corrupted me to their filthy cause – WHAT HAD I BECOME? I tried to make it as painless as possible for the little guys, yet deep down I was disgusted with myself. Their shrill cries of “You No Take Candle!” still haunt me in my nightmares.
Dejected and blood-stained, I returned to the Goldshire Inn, carrying a bag of broken candles and some small scraps of gold. Were these pathetic trinkets worth the cost of my soul? The soldier who commissioned me to clear out the Kobold mine congratulated me by saying “Kobolds…. Whats next? Dragons?”. Erm no, probably not for many many levels, Mr Overreaction! Is this some kind of weird ‘the ends justified the means‘ excuse? To add insult to injury, in exchange for the gold I recovered the get-rich-quick guy gave me… a bag of marbles. Worst. Quest reward. EVER.
I started poking around in the basement of the inn, wondering what horrors I might find. Oddly enough I found a level 11 Dwarf player who challenged me to a duel (at this point I was still level 6!). I accepted and threw the marbles at him. It didn’t help. I quickly found myself in a desperate bid to stay alive. I kited him like mad through the inn, using beer kegs and buxom elves for cover, all the time firing DoTs at him. Eventually to my amazement I won, barely. At this point that I realised that Warlocks were actually rather fun. However, I also realised that playing a Human is not, and had no desire to go back out into the sick world of happy bunnies and lies. Despite originally intending to reach at least level 10, I disgustedly logged off half way through level 6.
Final Thoughts: Ultimately this starting experience is pretty boring. Not much happens and it’s far too peaceful and rural an environment to be at all exciting. It’s just plain dull, with no attempt at story-telling or any sense of adventure or purpose. Furthermore, Goldshire confirmed everything I have ever said about Humans in Warcraft, that they act like holier-than-thou good guys, but they’re mostly evil bastards underneath. I felt *really* bad for killing all those Kobolds. These helpless creatures are guilty of no crime other than hiding themselves away in abandoned mines, and who could blame them for hiding down there when they are persecuted so? Yet for some reason I was required to take their lives, their money and their only light source. Players of Warcraft, I implore you: spare a thought for the innocent Kobolds!
Final Score: 2/10
These helpless creatures are guilty of no crime other than hiding themselves away in disused mines; yet for some reason I am required to take their lives, their money and their only light source – the candle. Remind me why Humans call the Horde the bad guys?
I had read on many RP servers some guild(s) ran bordello’s out of goldshire, too funny.
Great post thank you!
I do play a Human – well several really. But it has more to do with their looks (which I quite enjoy) and animations (not the dance, it’s horrible). I can definitely agree on the starting zone though, it’s really one of the most boring ones. Whenever I roll a human I like to try to get elsewhere for leveling as soon as possible.
You make a really good point about the kobolds too. I think we need to start a save the kobolds foundation or something. The poor little things.
I went through 4 or 5 10-day trials before actually buying the game. During that time I played with humans almost exclusively. Perhaps that was due to the fact that I knew nothing about the game, so picking something familiar to me meant that I wouldn’t feel like an idiot.
I’ve gone through all the starter zones on both horde and alliance and I’d definately agree with you about humans. There’s very little story there, and a lot of hypocrisy, and too much senseless voilence. There’s also too much dueling in Goldshire, please, get a life you people!
If you haven’t done a Gnome yet, they are worse than humans. They take orders from Dwarfs, they don’t have any cities or villages of their own…but, and this is what I like about their starting zone, is if I put my headphones on, turn on the AC and point a fan at me, get everyone out of the room, I can make it feel like the crunch of the snow and cold is in my own room. Immersive (for me at least).
Humans! PAH! I hate their starting areas. There’s really no point to them and I too hated killing the Kobolds. All they want to do is mine and protect their candles.
I too have tried to create a toon for each race to experience their starting zones. All that I’ve gotten for my trouble? A greater dislike for the Alliance and a deeper appreciation for the Horde 😀
Although I did find myself enjoying the Dwarf/Gnome starting area because it was a deep contrast from the pretty peaceful settings of the Human and Night Elf realms… I’m still working up the stomach to roll a Draenei… for that is the race I swore I’d never play. I can’t wait to read your next adventure into the realms of the Alliance!
This was great. Inspired, funny and not without insight. I laughed several times while reading, and still felt strangely saddened by and sympathetic to your kobold plight.
Thanks for the kind comments guys and yeah… SAVE THE KOBOLDS!
Feels great to see you’re still running your blog! (I remember you saying I was once one of the inspirations to start the blog, so kinda warms my heart to see you’re still taking care of it.)
And a late reply to your comment on my blog:
Actually, I am still alive and around (:
I’ll see how serious I’ll feel about my new character, but I am at the moments running around in Azeroth with a cackling little imp running behind.
Yeees! Start blogging again! 😀
I actually like the Human starter zone! And I enjoy coming back there to level new alts!
Maybe because it was there I first set foot in Azeroth and the environs felt a bit like home with all the green lushness, so going there brings back really fond memories.
[…] Alliance races that as a Horde-fanatic are completely unfamiliar to me. Having been dismayed by the hypocrisy and flimsy morals displayed by Humans, I was really hoping for something more impressive from my next character: a Night […]
This blog entry made me laugh so much. Thank you 🙂
I was so glad to get my human out of Elwynn and into Westfall where at least the locals have a Cause.
Sadly, the murlocs are persecuted too. I remember going out of my way to save little tadpoles in Northrend and now I have nothing but comtempt for those foul people who slaughter murlocs without a thought 😉
Glad you liked it! I feel your pain when it comes to Murloc suffering. These noble creatures, like Kobolds, have suffered too long under the reign of terror imposed by adventurers. Check out http://savethemurlocs.org – these people have the right idea!