One step forward, two steps back (aka another Gnomer post…sort of)

So one of rumouncements (that’s rumor/announcements for those of you playing along at home) posted on WoW.com today was about the retaking of Gnomeregan.  Seeing as how this issue is near and dear to my heart I was super excited to see a semi-official source saying that we will be retaking Gnomerergan.  I looked at the image in the article and read the text in it, “For Gnomeregan! After five years of players purging Gnomeregan of its irradiated inhabitants, Gnomes may finally be able to reclaim their home as a new capital city for the Alliance…”

Seriously. Awesome.

However my joy was short lived.  First I had to bring myself back down to reality and remember that this was all hearsay and speculation anyway.  The second thing that I realized was I had missed the last part of the text in the quote on the image. “…until they mess it up again.”

Ok look.  I love gnomish engineering in all its quirks.  Sometimes the failures are more fun and exciting than the actual intent of the device (catastrophic poultryizer failure anyone?), and it’s these little quirks that make playing Gnomes fun.  We’re eccentric, clever, ingenious, and loyal.  We are not however, children, footballs, fools, or failures.

What I’m getting at I suppose is I am bothered by the continual lack of respect for gnomes, and to a somewhat lesser extent, the players who play them.  I’m not railing against the taunts and cries of the Horde.  They are the opposing side.  They are supposed to hate us.  I’m bothered by those who would call us allies.  Goodhearted teasing isn’t the problem.  I tease my friend who plays a Night Elf about being a dang dirty lazy hippie.  So when a few jokes about my stature or the reach of my arm comes my way, it doesn’t phase me.  It’s when people step in with the attitude (and sometimes the phrase), “Step aside shorty, let the real heroes take care of this.”  It shows a fundamental lack of faith and trust.  So when I read that we might get to retake Gnomeregan “until [we] mess it up again” I can’t help but feel the heavily implied (intended or not) disrespect.

Don’t write us off.

You may regret it.

“[Insert clever sign off phrase here]“

~Fizz

PS: Anyone who doesn’t think that the gnomes are heavily denigrated, just go read the comments in that post I mentioned.  Yes, many of the comments are cheers of huzzah, and there are an equal amount of people crying “If you give the Gnomes back their home, the Trolls should get theirs too.”  But if you really read the comments, you will pick up on an immense amount of flippant disregard for the Gnomes.

PPS: Just as a side note, for anyone wondering, yes I support the Trolls getting their own city (whether it be the Echo Isles or not).

For Gnomeregan!

I read a post over at Armaggedon’s Coming today that got my passions inflamed.  To sum it up, Gnomeaggedon makes the claim that the Gnomes need to retake Gnomeregan to escape our Dwarfish and Human oppressors.  He talks about how we are relegated to the smallest, dirtiest areas of Ironforge and Stormwind, and how we are mostly treated as an afterthought.  He accuses the Dwarfs and Humans of “receiving some sort of Alliance Refugee Assistance Payments, keeping it for themselves to fund their exploration and war efforts while the Gnomes sleep rough on the streets and get relegated to corner shop owners.”

And you know, it’s hard for me to disagree with him.  It may be because I have my own theory on what actually happened in Gnomeregan.

Read more to find out about the great Gnome conspiracy of our day.

…And they called him Thistlefizz

I ran out of time last night before I could finish this post due to my weekly raid schedule.  I knew it was coming, but I got distracted by that ‘new blog smell’ and kept tweaking this theme or that format.

Anyway, to continue my story from yesterday…ah yes, fate having other plans and all that.

I had been so determined to become the most annoying Gnome in all of Azeroth.  But I quickly discovered that I couldn’t even whisper people with a trial account.  To be honest, I’m still not really sure what ultimately made me decide that it would be totally fine to buy a regular account just to annoy people.  I’d like to think though that by that point the annoyance factor was really just more of a justification.  In truth, I was already completely hooked.

On this day a Gnome is born…

My initial foray into Azeroth was not exactly what you would call typical.  It was a dreary February day, I had been out of work for a long time, and I was very bored.  My roommate had been playing WoW for quite a long time (since it’s release I believe) and was playing his paladin.  I had played Warcraft 2 and loved it–although I had no idea there was anything after it.  So I began asking  him questions about what he was doing, where he was going, what the game was like and so on.  He was in Ironforge at the time and as I was asking him about the game, he was accosted by a gold beggar.  He was so annoyed by it that I couldn’t help but laugh at his frustration as he yelled at what pretty much amounted to pixels on a screen.