Lovely Leper Lady Lackies!

Currently there are no female leper gnomes in World of Warcraft. There’s not even an unused NPC skin that would allow for them.

The first lady leper was Ressa the Leper Queen. Created for the “Servants of the Betrayer” expansion for the Warcraft TCG in April 2008. She was the only leper gnome of the kind for over 15 years!

Now Warcraft Rumble has added multiple (well, 2) new female leper gnomes! And what the actual heck, they are… CUTE?

These new leper gnomes look amazing. They are clearly lepers, but the style of Warcraft Rumble takes away the unpleasant gross factor and leaves them fun and interesting looking. I especially love the Phantom of the Opera style coloration on their faces. It gives them a ton of personality!

It also appears that Lieutenant Tom “Sizzlepants” Crankle is out as the pilot of the Eletrocutioner 6000 and has been replaced by… wait… is that… Ressa? So maybe they added 1 new female leper gnome, and brought back the Queen of the Lepers. It’s not explicitly stated, but if it is her, I am excited at the idea that she has not been forgotten by the Warcraft team and they still think about using her. Maybe we’ll see her in a future Gnomeregan related quest. Gnomeregan was teased in the Warcraft Classic Season of Discovery announcement. It would be awesome to see her pop-up as a new secret raid boss!

https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Electrocutioner_6000

https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Ressa_the_Leper_Queen

The Best Cities for Cross Faction Guilds

Since the announcement of cross-faction guilds in 10.1, I’ve seen a lot of people request the ability to hang out in the opposite faction’s capital cities. There are some practical quality-of-life benefits that allowing cross faction characters to hang out in each other cities would allow, and the game is always in need for more role-play features. On top of that, the term “World Revamp” has been tossed around a lot lately, and most capital cities are showing their age. Going from Valdrakken to Stormwind is quite a contrast.

Let’s assume some cities get updated; if one Alliance, then also one Horde. Which cities would work best for incorporating cross-faction guilds?

Orgrimmar and Stormwind
(but, no not really)

Orgrimmar was updated in Cataclysm, and I really like the aesthetic they went with. I like it more than the “Flintstones” vibe the old city had. Stormwind has not been as lucky, except that some updates that really feel shoehorned in.

I think these are the worst possible picks for allowing cross faction characters to hang out. They are iconic to their faction and should stay that way. Capital city PvP raids should still be possible, and they would be too easy if you could congregate in the city before they start. These two do not get my vote.

Dalaran
(for the last time)

Dalaran already exists as what we’re going for. It would be good for Dalaran to get tied down geographically. Make it an evergreen place. The city has strong Sigil from Forgotten Realms vibes. The “City of Portals” idea could really be leaned in to. The portal rooms in each of the capital cities could send you to Dalaran, then you could portal to anywhere else from there. If the portals were scattered around the city we would see players running every which way all the time. It would be a city that always felt full and alive. It could function as a permanent secondary hub for each expansion.

Darnassus and Undercity
(or whatever ends up replacing them)

There are a lot of racial capital cities that are occupied by hostile forces or destroyed entirely. There is a lot of demand for these capitals to return. It’s easy to see Blizzard moving these two up the list to bring back.

Given the events that destroyed each of these cities, I don’t see them as being very tolerant of having the other faction just hanging out.

Theramoore
(rebuilt with purpose)

With the new shift towards peace, the Horde could make a good will gesture by rebuilding Theramore, and ‘gifting’ it back to the Alliance. While in reality, it would like what Theramore was like once upon a time for Jaina and Thrall. It could be the place to go for Alliance/Horde relations. It would be even more meaningful now. Theramore could represent the peace between the factions surviving in spite of individuals that want to rip them apart.

Ironforge and Thunder Bluff
(new purpose for forgotten cities)

I don’t think there is much room, or need to update these cities. They feel very ‘remote’ and out of the way. Thunder Bluff especially would feel strange packed full of people. Ironforge was designed to be the central city of the Alliance, and while it needs some aesthetic touch-ups, it’s really fine.

These seem like the most boring choices to me.

The Crossroads and Menethil Harbor
(central hubs)

These cities are both geographically central to their continents. They are both small now, but with plenty of room to be built in to anything. These would also have strong Horde/Alliance flare, without being a single races’ capital. If single faction flavor doesn’t work, Night elf and Draenei buildings could be added to the peripheral of Crossroads and Menethil Harbor could get some Undercity and Quel’thalas architecture. Both cities could probably use new names though. Rename the Crossroads after Cairne and Menethil Harbor after Lothar.

The Echo Isles and Gnomeregan (real cities at last)

Echo Isles and Gnomeregan
(real cities at last)

These cities are voids. Both were updated in Cataclysm, but they are still just starting zones. Gnomes and trolls are on the chill side of things with faction conflict. The Darkspear lost their home to Naga, and the Reganic gnomes lost their home to internal conflicts. Neither has had their home or civilization decimated by the other faction.

They offer radically different aesthetics. If they are set-up to be cross faction friendly, guilds could hang out in whichever one suited them best. Echo Isle obviously has plenty of coastline to expand to, and new islands could be added to increase the size. Gnomeregan is… sort of on the coast as. The mountain it’s under is on the coast, they just is not an opening to the sea that we know of). A new entrance on the west side of the mountain would open right on the coastline. Maybe we could get submarines to ferry us around!

Booty Bay, Ratchet, Gadgetzan, and Winterspring
(so many options)

These are all well established cities that are already neutral in game. Right now they are small town quest hubs, but they could be expanded into so much more.

Booty Bay – If only two of these cities were updated, Booty Bay has to be one of them simply because it’s the only one in the Eastern Kingdoms. The topography around Booty Bay does not leave much room for expansion… on land, but imagine the bay packed with boats representing every faction, race, class, profession, and service crammed in so tightly that you can walk from boat to boat with no issue.

Ratchet – The direct shipping lane from Booty Bay makes Ratchet a natural choice to complement a Booty Bay upgrade. The two cities could function as one mega-city. The boats back and forth would always be full! There is a lot of room in the barrens for expansion. Gazlowe founded Ratchet, and is the new Trade Price of the Bilgewater Cartel. I could see him using his new expanded resource base to invest in the infrastructure of the city he build. Come to think of it, that’s a strong argument for making Ratchet a Horde city. Maybe make Rachet the Goblin Capital and do something else with Bildgewater Harbor…

Gadgetzan – The fan favorite. Ever since the “Mean Streets of Gadgetzan” Hearthstone expansion, players have been fantasizing about what that would look like in WoW. This city already feels the most neutral. There is a ton of room in the Tarnaris desert for it to expand into. Honestly, if everything else in Tarnaris was removed and the city was expanded to fill the entire zone nothing of value would be lost. (The Bronze Dragonflight would need a respectful buffer, and the city could subsume Zul’Farrak)

Winterspring – This city just doesn’t have much going for it right now, but that might work in it’s favor if we’re looking to do a big update. The most interesting thing around are the Furbolgs, which could be very interesting now that we can learn to speak the Furbolg language (Ursine). This city would work especially well if Furbolgs became an allied race.

Bildgewater Harbor and Gilneas
(nice, but underutilized)

Not really on even footing. Bildgewater is already a functioning city, and Gilneas is not. I honestly don’t like Bildgewater Harbor. It’s too close to Orgrimmar and just feel like it’s part of that city. If it expanded at all, they would end up merging in to one super city, which could be cool. With Gazlowe as Trade Prince, I would rather see him expand Ratchet, and this can just become Orgrimmar’s harbor.

Gilneas is done. The whole city is there and it looks great! It needs a scenario where we retake it, and then it needs to actually be re-took (ಠ_ಠ Gnomeregan). Gilneas is another city I see having too much animosity to the Horde to allow them to wander around casually.

Dark Portal and Nordrassil
(significance)

These places are the scenes of two of the most formative events in Azeroth’s history. Putting large settlements around them makes a lot of sense from an out of character perspective more than anything. Narratively, it would work to center our adventures around these monuments that are the impetus for many of those adventures.

No to Netherguard Keep though. I would not want to see the existing settlements in the area upgraded. A new settlement with the object as a center piece (not literally ‘center’. please no more circle cities) is what I would like to see.

Silvermoon and Exodar
(but mostly Silvermoon)

Exodar because it needs to be added to the old world and Draenei are forgiving. Done. Next.

Let’s be real, Silvermoon is THE BEST choice. Honestly It would be alone on this list, but one faction “losing” a city would not be well received.

First, Silvermoon is huge and has a ton of viable unused space. There are ruins next to it that could be repaired and the entire coast north of the city is empty. The size of Silvermoon could be doubled, tripled, quadrupled possibly more without removing anything needed for the Blood Elf starting experience.

Second, the players have spoken, and high elves are back. The variety of elves would give the redesigned city a multitude of styles, and a complex political climate. Visually distinct districts for Blood Elves, and High Elves, and Nighborne, and Silver Covenant, _and Illidari, ^AND Shen’dralar are all possible. Of course, we can’t forget the Dark Rangers, Banshees, Darkfallen, & San’layn. They would open up an excellent opportunity to incorporate forsaken/scourge/nerubian style in to the city. Despite the TEN groups I just named, elves branch out even further into strange and obscure ways. Area’s could be set aside for wretched and withered on the outskirts of the city, or in a magic hospital/rehabilitation facility. Felblood and Felborne could be found hiding themselves in the warlock district. The city could even sport a dungeon with satyrs, naga, fal’dorei, and who know what else like the Stockades or Ragefire Chasm.

There are so many splinter factions of elves with a recent shared history and Blizzard should take full advantage.

The Old Gods Created the Ancients and Loa

Recently I was looking at the Warcraft Timeline while working on an unrelated project. I noticed 2 things.

1. Before the arrival of the Old Gods, there was no life on the surface of Azeroth due to constant war between the elements.
2. After then Old Gods were defeated, the Titans find the ancients/loas and bless some of them with the gift of speech.

This implied that the ancients came in to being during the time of the Black Empire. I think this makes a lot of sense. Life could not take hold on Azeroth with the Elemental lords constantly at war. When the Old Gods arrive, we see the first flesh and blood lifeforms. Once the Elemental lords were subdued, the Old Gods set about creating all kinds of lifeforms.

As Oden says in one of his recently revealed books, “Remember: Life is chaos. It must be controlled.”

This might also explain why we see lush bastions of wild growth in areas next to Old Gods. We are told that Un’Goro Crater is a place of titan experimentation, but what if it was originally created by C’Thun? The same can be said about Yogg-Saron and Sholazar Basin.

This would fit with the line in this line from Old Gods and the Ordering of Azeroth (Annotated), “The titans wounded the world with their recklessness, then insist it was done by design. Perposterous! It was the Old Gods who nurtured the flesh of this world, not the titans!“

We have seen parts of the Black Empire, but only the center of cities. We’ve never seen what the world beyond those cities was like.

Theory: High Elves are Actually Half Elves

I think the elves of Quel’Thalas are half night elf and half human.

Humans came to the northern part of the Eastern Kingdoms 15,000 years before the opening of the Dark Portal. They settled around the area of Keeper Tyr’s tomb, Tirisfal.

5,000 years later the sundering happened, and 2,800 years after the sundering, the High Born Night Elves were banished across the sea, and settled in the area of Tirisfal. It was 500 years after they arrived in the Eastern Kingdoms that these elves sequestered themselves in Quel’Thalas.

It’s during this time that the high elves got shorter, lost their immortality, and their skin tones changed to match human skin tones. I think it’s inevitable that in that amount of time, there was comingling between elves and humans.

Meanwhile, the Night Elves that remained in Kalimdor raised a veil of mist to shroud Kalimdor from outsiders. This prevented the High Born from returning and is probably what truly cut them of from the source of their immortality.

High Born in the eastern kingdoms would have no way of knowing that a mystical barrier had been placed between the world tree and themselves. They would start suffering from magic withdrawn with no understand what was happening or why. Eventually they would also notice the first signs of ageing.

Humans are mortal of course. It’s very easy to imagine that some High Born would blame these problems on the humans that they had brought in to their mix.

In a bid to restore their longevity, they isolated themselves to a peninsula, and avoided as much contact with humans as possible. Over the course of the next 6,000+ years the human blood in the elves of Quel’Thalas would end up distributed fairly evenly, resulting in the High Elves, Blood Elves, and Void Elves we see today.

Playing Tyr’s Advocate, Plus You Are All Burying the Lede!

#Spoilers

Some new lore dropped with the pre-patch testing for Dragonflight. Community reaction seems to be mostly negative.

So what was this new lore?

We learned that Yogg-Saron contaminated a well of ‘living waters’. Galakrond drank the corrupted water and was transformed in to a giant rampaging monster. Watcher Tyr was tasked with building a facility to remove whatever Yogg-Saron put in the water. The purification of the water will be achieved buy infusing it with arcane energy. This will affect the dragons, but in ways that Tyr thinks will be advantageous to the Titans’ goals.

It looks like most people have read this as “Tyr poisoned the water to brainwash all dragons into servitude.” That seems like an extremely uncharitable interpretation that casts the events in as negative light as possible.

There are some things to consider.

1. This is a letter from Tyr trying to convince other keepers that the dragons aspects will be good allies. He may playing up the effects of magic in order to make his argument stronger.
2. We are not shown any kind of alternatives. This might be the only way to fix what’s happening, or the only way Tyr knows of.
3. Tyr intent is clearly to help the dragons. He’s clearly already developed a fondness for dragons, and is doing this to help them.
4. The dragon aspects were alive when this happened. They know about it, and have free will. They could be reversing the effects if they wanted to, but clearly they are not.
5. Look at the results. What Yogg-Saron did created Galakrond, what Tyr did created the Dragon Aspects. It’s hard to find fault with that.

But let’s assume that the worst is true. Tyr was trying to brainwash and enslave all of dragon kind. That could the start of a decent story. We could follow Tyr as he becomes disillusioned with the vision of the Titans, grows closer to mortal races, and realizes he’s made a terrible mistake. Tyr has a reputation as one of the most noble and honorable characters in Warcraft history. Atoning for past mistakes might be part of the motivation behind the Tyr we are more familiar with. Maybe Tyr’s turned away from arcane magic and towards the light, because it could be used to empower mortals and keep their sense of self. Paladins would be Tyr’s new Dragon Aspects, but better.

From a writers perspective, I think that this information is only meant to flesh out the details of what happened when the aspects were created. I don’t think Tyr is being recast as an evil or even morally gray character. I think the writers see this as Tyr doing the right thing, or at the very least what he had to.

I think the reaction to Tyr’s actions creating the dragon aspects is completely overshadowing what we’re supposed to be picking up form this new lore.

We’re being told there is a back-up of Tyr’s memories in the same expansion that we’re being introduced to Sindragosa’s simulacrum. If we do not get a Tyr simulacrum before 11.0, I will be shocked. In fact, given what we know about Mimiron, we might just be brining Tyr back to life entirely.

In the end, I expect we’ll get a “Tyr is a good guy, he had no alternatives” statement from the writing team, and whole thing will be treated as Tyr doing the right and noble thing, saving the dragons. Which is almost a shame, because I think atoning for a past sin would make him a more interesting character.

At any rate, we can just ask him what he was thinking when we bring him back in 10.3.

Note: I stole all these images from Twitter.

There's a book in the new Uldaman dungeon, this gives us the answer to what caused Galakrond fairly flat out lol, and the answer to one of the currently unknown titan facilities.

Also titans put chemicals in the water that turned the dragons gay pic.twitter.com/Pr45guffA2

— Portergauge 🏳️‍🌈 (@Portergauge) October 14, 2022

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Hear Me Out: Race Squish

The character creation screen is getting a little crowded.

The allied races were something that I personally wanted for a long time. What we ended up getting was not exactly what I had hoped for. To me, the dark ranger customizations are perfect. I like the story quests to explain the new options, and I like that the customizations can be applied to existing characters.

I am starting to hope that we might see a ‘race squish’ someday where allied race are rolled in to their parent race as extra customizations options. They can still be locked behind achievements, but let us apply the fun new things we’ve unlocked to our existing characters.

There would be some complications. Kul Tiran Humans are very different than Stormwind Humans, but now that we have body type as an option instead of gender, they should be no problem. A race squish would make racial abilities a little complicated. I do not think that dumping all the existing racial abilities on the the combined race makes sense, but I think that with Dragonflight, we are getting rid of a system that could be recycled as a good solution. The talent structure that is going away is very limited in how many options you have, and how many you can have active. Those limitations would fit racial abilities very well. Existing abilities could be moved in to columns that could be selected either at character creation, or through leveling. Most races will need abilities added. Filling out their lists of abilities opens up the opportunity to give more direct parity of racial abilities across factions.

For example, Gnomes and Mechagnomes are combined to one race. They would have a column of abilities to select from based on Gnomeregan Gnomes, and a column of traits to pick based on Mechagon Mechagnomes. To round out the selections, we pull the racial traits of a Horde group that has abilities of a similar theme to gnomes, like Bilgewater Cartel Goblins. This would give people more freedom to pick a race based on aesthetic. No need to worry about which racial abilities feel required.

It adds more RP flavor to each individual character. You could have a character that had lived in several different places that picked up cultural traditions from all of them, or stick to the one background, or if you don’t care about any of that, pick the ones that best match your class and playstyle.

The largest hurdle I see is Vulpera. They are not a subset of an existing race, they are a whole new group all to themselves. Balancing that out would mean either adding one new race to the Alliance, or having a Horde race become truly neutral. Either of those are likely to cause a lot of discontent with the player base.

Please try not to focus on which trait I put at which level, or how I filled in the holes where gnomes have less abilities than goblins. I was trying not make sure there were enough tiers that no race would lose any abilities, so there were some placeholder abilities I threw in. Not all the abilities would need to be location themed. Orcs, would probably get Blackrock, Warsong, and Mag’har as their options. Gilneans could have something like Worgen Curse, Touch of Undeath, and Purified.

Reorganizing these existing abilities creates a ton of RP flavor and makes balancing race/faction abilities practically automatic.

Another Reason to Like Gnomes

I know it’s an unpopular opinion at the moment, but I like Sylvanas Windrunner in Battle for Azeroth. She has done horrible terrible things that I will always condemn out of character, which has made me wonder why I still like her in spite of these atrocities. I think the answer is Motivation. Sylvanas clearly has goals and is actively flexing her agency to accomplish those goals. This is why a lot of villains are popular.

While reminiscing about Vanilla Warcraft I came to the conclusion that gnomes are the most Motivated race. Their city is in a shambles, but they are actively working towards retaking it. You run in to gnomes all over Azeroth (not many, but still widely scattered) and plenty of them explicitly state that they are where they are doing research on how to fix Gnomeregan.

No other group in Vanilla WoW had such a clear and driving goal at such a high level. The trolls were not as dedicated to reclaiming the Echo Isles (which they managed to 100% do anyway.)

I’ve lamented in the past that Gnomes had very little identity outside of Engineering. It’s an idea that I feel like doesn’t give gnomes enough credit and is a bias I myself had to take a hard look at to get around. Yes, engineering is important to them, and yes it’s one of the main things that attracted me to the race, but being a one trick pony always gets boring, no matter how good the one trick is.

I don’t see reclaiming Gnomeregan the same way I did in the past. It was not something I wanted in the background of my lighthearted, carefree race. Now instead of seeing a tragedy that drove gnomes from there home, I see the rally to conquer a common foe, to return to homes that had been stolen, and I know that, to some extent, anytime I see another gnome our characters have that in common.

That unifying goal give gnomes as a whole a personality that is hard to match. Worgen find themselves in this situation more than anyone right now. Goblins, Night elves and Undead are displaced, but their homes are essentially gone, and now they will have to find a new one. They will all set out in different directions for new homes. While the opposite is true for gnomes they have all set their course together with a common destination.

“For Gnomeregan” is different than “For the Horde” the horde rally cry is basically “Go Team!”. The Horde has the Horde, but we don’t have Gnomeregan, it’s something we are striving for.

I’m really happy Mechagon exists. It adds new gnome content without removing this large driving factor. The gnomes having a capital city is something I would love to see, and I do genuinely enjoy the peeks we are offered in to the current state of Gnomeregan by the pet battle dungeon and Heritage armor quests, and I think there is room for a raid in there someday, but I don’t think I want to see gnomes lose their white whale. Gnomeregan will always be a dungeon and that’s good, because it gives us purpose.

My Take Away from Warcraft Classic

Full Disclosure: I have not played Warcraft Classic, but I have been listening attentively to those playing it, trying to understand why they like about it.  It sound like there are two things about it that really get people excited, community, and difficulty.

Difficulty:  Leveling in Warcraft Classic requires you to be more alert, and talent points make levels feel more impactful.  The raids are much easier, because 15 years of honing players against ever increasing bosses has led to a situation where a group of not even level 60 characters in green armor can clear Molten Core in less than a week.

Everyone knows that leveling in World of Warcraft has gotten onerous and wonky. I’m excited to see how the Devs take the information gained from Classic and use it in the impending level squish.

A while ago, I posted this about incorporating the Ironman Challenge as a feature that would be selected at character creation, or built into a special class, but now having a custom challenge server seems like the obvious solution.  “Extremophile” servers where things like, permanent death, disabled quests, NPC damage and health are increased, could be done.  It would have the advantage of putting everyone together in the same boat.  Right now if you are running the Ironman Challenge, most likely no one around you is, but if it’s a dedicated server, literally every other character would be playing by the same rules.

Warmode was a great addition to Normal Servers, but it seems to have taken something away from PvP servers.  I think removing the PvP flag from those servers was a step in the wrong direction.  Even if nothing mechanically was changed at this point, those servers have a strong cultural difference from normal servers that should be acknowledged.

Community: “With the LFG and LFR tools removed, people have to talk to each other.” is what I keep hearing about what makes the Classic community better, but what seems to really excite people are drive by buffs.  Getting Powerword: Fortitude, and Mark of The Wild cast on you as someone runs by is genuinely a great feel I remember back from Vanilla WoW.  I would not be surprised if weak “handshake” buffs were added for each class in the next expansion, so that walking past another PC means getting a little buff to say “Hi”.

Like the difficulty issues, these community issues could be addressed with specialty servers.  Removing the servers from CRZ and the disabling the LFG/LFR would be easy.  What else could be done to promote community at the server level?  What if “Lone Wolf” servers were created, a server where the character max is 1.  If you can only have one character on the server, and the barbershop is disabled, everyone will quickly become recognizable.  This would mean that you only have 2 professions on that server, so no making an alt for each profession and mailing yourself materials.  No bank alts would mean that the cities would not be full of low level characters standing around ignoring everyone.

What would all this lead to?  I don’t think I’m too far outside the realm of possibility when I suggest Private Servers.  Not the illicit pirate servers that people create, but a monthly fee to Blizzard for a server that people can join by invite only.  This is how Minecraft has operated for years.  When you’re paying for the server, you could set any number of options, disable features, set character limits, permanent death, or whatever settings are deemed acceptable by Blizzard.  If Private Servers happened, I imagine they would mostly be used by streamers to create servers for just their fans, and very VERY large guilds. These servers would probably not contribute to account wide collections either.

What do you think?  What kinds of challenges would you like to see added to retail?  Would you be turned off if Private Servers became an option?  What are the best parts of classic that could be brought to retail?

Are Gnomes Heroes?

Are there any gnome heroes in World of Warcraft? I know there are a few notable gnome charaters, but do any of them qualify as true heroes? Do player gnomes even live up to the definition?

Let’s start with a solid definition of what it means to be a hero. I’m going to be using the Hero’s Journey as a template.

Let’s look at Mekkatorque and his progression through the Hero’s Journey.

1. Status Quo. Mekkatorque has been leader of gnomes for a long time.

2. Call to action. The Invation of Gnomeregan. The quite orderly city of Gnomeregan is invaded by troggs. Mekkatorque takes steps to defend it.

3. Refusal of the call. In most stories the hero doubts their own ability to rise to the challenge. Mekkatorque’s refusal is diffrent. He refuses to reach out to the Alliance for assistance.

4. The Mentor. The Fall of Gnomeregan. Gelbin’s ‘mentor’ is his advisor Sicco Thermaplugg. Thermaplugg takes action that forces Mekkatorque’s hand.

5. Crossing the threshold. Gnomeregan must be abandoned. The gnomes must leave their orderly society and forge a new existance on the foreign and wartorn surface.

6. Trials. War with the Horde flaires up, the Burnimg Crusade happens, and the war in Northrend. The players participate in these events, but Gelbin does not.

7: Approach. Operation: Gnomeregan. Moira takes the throne in Ironforge and evicts the gnomes. For the second time, Mekkatorque’s hand is forced.

8: Ordeal. Cut Short. Gelbin is trapped alone in his own office. He confronts his personal guilt for the tragedy, he must defeat 3 troggs unarmed, and finally look the gnome who betrayed him in the eyes. Gelbin’s ordeal here is primarily mental, finding the strength to accept and move past what has happened.

9: Reward: Gelbin founds New Tinker Town. His confrontation with Thermaplugg ended in a stalemate so Gnomeregan remains out of reach. Mekkatorque’s journey seems to have has stalled.

10: The road back. Gnomeregan is being cleansed. We know that some sectors have been reclaimed. The G-team and S.A.F.E. have agents all over the place restoring order and rebuilding.

11: Atonenment. Have the gnomes forgiven the High Tinker? No, and they can’t because they never blamed him. Perhaps if we see a gnome election in the future this stage could be satisfactorily resolved.

12: Return: This will be when Mekkatorque stands as High Tinker of Gnomeregan once again. A better, wiser ruler for the experiences he has had.

Clearly Mekkatorque has not finished this journey, but he acts like he has. His appearances in the Siege of Orgrimmar,  the Broken Shore, and at the Battle for Undercity are the actions of a transformed gnome. Clearly he has completed the journey. Unfortunatly for us it seems like much of his adventures happened off screen.

And what of player gnomes? Mekkatorque’s story is our story. The amount of that story that takes place off screen is a problem for us. A new gnome starts right at stage 5. We are immediately forced across the threshold in to our trials. Their is no status quo for gnomes. We never see who they are in the beginning so we have no idea how their adventures change them.

Idealy our starting zone would take us from steps 1-5. The worgen have an amazing starting zone that really informs the players who they are, who Genn is and what has called them out in to the wider world.

It is a shame that the gnome starting experiance doesn’t start before the invation of Gnomeregan. I hope that when gnomes get an allied race, their introduction will give them the background they need.

Dreaming of Gnome Druids

With Dragonflight, the Blizzard Developers have stated they would like to open all classes up to all races.  While some classes have been added already, they’ve held back on others because they feel like they do not make sense without a story to explain why or how some races have picked up practices that are traditionally far removed from their native cultures.  I think this is a fantastic idea.  I always love more creative options, and the the fact they are working on story to support new combinations is exciting.  It will mean a lot of identity development for both races and classes.

Gnomes currently can not be paladins, shamans, or druids.  Paladins will be the easiest by far.  When gnomes were given access to priests, it was almost strange that they did NOT get paladins.  Gnome shamans will be a little more of an oddity, but elemental magic seems like a practice gnomes would be inherently attracted to.  Personally, I would love to see sand-gnomes or pygmies brough in to the fold of gnome civilization to introduce shamanism.  Adding these long lost gnomes would be a great opportunity to expand gnome lore using established canon.

Of the three gnome druids will be the most difficult to write.  The guardian of nature aspect of druids is the polar opposite of the industrial machinations of gnomes.  There is part of me that fears we will get a “gArDeN gNoMeS” joke and little to know meaningful explanation.  Blizzard normally takes the lore of the druid class very seriously, so I am sure whatever they add will have substance.

With all that said, I have a blue sky hope for gnome druids, that they will be based (loosely) on “The Dreamfinder” Blarion Mercurial from Disney World’s EPCOT park.  The Dreamfinder character is a bearded man that rides around in his “Dream Mobile”, a zeppelin like craft with a heavy steampunk aesthetic.  He collects dream energy and uses it to manifest creations of raw imagination.

I think using the Emerald Dream to connect gnomes to druids would be a novel choice.  It gives an excellent opportunity to play off of the gnome racial trait “Expansive Mind”.  The Emerald Dream is related to the Titans like gnomes are.  It also might give a new perspective to what the Emerald Dream is.  It also helps get around the fact that gnomes simply are not protectors of nature.  We’ve seen that the environmental damage they do is on par with goblins.  Gnomes are high minded, big thinkers, so bringing them in to the druid mindset by starting with the extradimensional plane and astral powers makes the most sense.

I know I’m already working on backstories for gnome druid characters.

• Stuck with “Inventor’s Block” a gnome seeks out a source of pure inspiration.
• Plagued by nightmares a gnome builds a dream catcher that works a little too well.
• A gnome with a slime that used to be a beloved family member.  They have taken it to every group of magic users they know of.  The Cenarion Circle, is the first group that shows any promise.
• A teleporter accident leaves a gnome stranded in the Emerald Dream for a really, REALLY long time.  (Think Robin Williams from Jumaji.)
• Upon being told the Emerald Dream is an “unspoiled copy” of Azeroth, a gnome seeks to “reset” Gnomeregan.