I hate orcs

Orcs. I don't know why we call them a race. They are not. They are an invasive, destructive, alien species.

This species destroyed their own world. And when I say destroyed, I mean they blew it up into separate pieces, floating in the nether. This was all part of their attempt to destroy their civilized neighbours, the Draenei. And having almost wiped out the Draenei and destroyed their own world, they opened a portal into our world and they immediately tried to destroy us, too.

A Draenei spaceship escaped from their dying planet, and crash-landed on ours. The difference between their behaviour and the orcs was instructive. The Draenei tried to repair the damage their crashed spaceship caused, and tried to establish good relations with their Azerothean neighbours. Guess what the orcs did? Not hard, that one. They tried to kill everyone they met.

Today's orcs like to pretend that it was the 'old' orcs, the 'fel' orcs who were the problem. They were junkies, under the influence of drugs. Like heroin addicts, they destroyed every place they ever lived in, and threatened all their neighbours with their needles (and axes and blades). Heroin (like Mannoroth's blood) is a tough drug to get off. Imagine having to live next to them.

What weak-willed boredom led them to take it in the first place? Oh, Gul'dan. He said it would make them feel strong and great. It was his fault. Yeah. Blame the drug-pusher on your own problems. Like all drug addicts, it's never their fault. They blame everyone but themselves. Not their fault. Gul'dan made them do it. It's not like they had a choice. Oh, and Mannoroth and  Kil'jaedan, it was their fault, too. The orcs were just poor innocent victims. Oh, and Illidan and Magtheridon. Poor helpless orcs. Meanwhile the Draenei did not succumb. They fought on against countless enemies for what they knew was right. May the light be upon them forever.

Once the orcs had destroyed Draenor, They came through the Dark Portal to Azeroth. Did they come in peace? By the light, they did not. They tried to destroy this world, too. We humans are stern enemies, though, and we fought back to defend our world and our families from these orcs who were bent on terrorizing our world as they had terrorized Draenor.

Today's orcs are just the same as the fel orcs of their past. They carry on destroying whatever they meet, and never accept responsibility for their own actions. Under their leader Garrosh Hellscream, their horde invaded the mystical elven woods of Ashenvale, burning both the woods and the peaceful town of Astranaar. They gave the ancient holy places of Azshara to their goblin serfs to build a racetrack on (who they then got to destroy Theramore). And they invaded the newly-discovered isle of Pandaria, attempting to enthrall another race. Yeah. Real good neighbours.

Now we hear the same old story from the orcs. It wasn't us, it was Garrosh. He made us do it. The orcs of today are the same cruel, feckless, weak-willed thugs as they ever were, picking on whoever they think they can bully, Like the Draenei showed, and the humans confirmed, the best way to deal with orcs is to fight back.

Illidan's army.

 I am Aion.

Dàchéng isn't happy with what Khadgar is up to. She keeps muttering about betrayal, and the mistakes that Khadgar made in the past, and how the orcs are the real enemy. I don't care. I'm loving it. Killing demons of the Burning Legion? What could be better. I have dedicated my life to killing demons, so it's a bit of an annoyance that the cows in Highmountain keep asking me to fix their trivial gardening problems, but I feel for the elves in Suramar, Azsuna and Azshara. All the same, I don't have time to worry about their problems. Demons need killing.

And that's what worries me about Khadgar's new plan of returning to Kharazan. Has he not noticed the big island below Dalaran, containing the Tomb of Sargeras? It's crawling with demons. Uhm. Maybe we should be concentrating on this place instead of hunting down actors in Kharazan or bears, spiders and dragons in the Emerald Nightmare. Let the Kirin Tor tidy up Kharazan if they feel the need to (they've got to be good for something, right?) and let the dragons and the druids worry about the Emerald Nightmare. It might keep them from interrupting the Illidari's mission to destroy the demons of the Burning Legion.

Where are these demons coming from? We've seen portals all over the Broken Isles. My first step would be to try to take control of these portals, and to try to ascertain who is able to create them and how.  But the rest of the elves seem more concerned with their next mana fix, or making sure the balance of nature is maintained. The Vrykul have their own private agendas and gods to worry about; and who cares about the petty problems of a herd of cattle? It's down to the Illidari to show the way. We should destroy the demons in the Felsoul Hold in Suramar, then take the fight to the Broken Shore.

TG4 - fíche bliain ag fás

Fíche bliain ó shin, thainig Teilifís na Gaeilge - TnaG - ar an tsaoil. TG4 mar atá siad anois. Go mairfidh siad beo, agus go mbeadh súil eile ann i gcónaí.

Scéal eile: an bhfaca sibh an aimsir aréir?

Jaina and me.

Khadgar has taken a course of action that he knew would allow him to depose Jaina from the leadership of the Kirin Tor and assume the leadership himself. Now, Khadgar was the guy who had us storm the Dark Portal into Alternative Draenor and free Gul'dan from his imprisonment, so he is far from infallible. Jaina, on the other hand, has always been right, and despite that is always marginalised by the menfolk in the Alliance (Ansirem Runeweaver is the only honorable exception).

• She was right to try to build a dialogue with Thrall in the hopes of bringing peace between the Horde and the Alliance
• She was right to urge Varian to defend the lands in Kalimdor that the horde were invading under Garrosh's leadership
• She was right to banish the Horde from Dalaran in reponse to their betrayal of the neutrality of Dalaran by smuggling the Divine Bell through the city. The Divine Bell, you will recall, was to be the power unit for a bomb similar to the one that flattened Theramore and killed all its inhabitants.
• She was right to urge Varian to besiege and take Orgrimmar and defeat the horde under Garrosh. if only Varian had allowed Thrall to execute Garrosh when he had the chance, and had followed Jaina's advice to take executive control of Orgrimmar and dismantle the Horde as a military force and a political entity, we would not face the peril we currently face.
• After Varian's death, she was right to urge Anduin not to trust the horde, who had shown their untrustworthy character on several occasions - the invasion of Azeroth by the orcs; the destruction of Lordaeron by the undead; the Wrathgate; Theramore; the list is far from complete. The Horde, and not the Burning Legion, are the greater existential threat to the Alliance.

She's had enough of being right and being ignored, and has withdrawn from the Kirin Tor in the wake of the council's vote of no confidence - effectively telling her that they prefer Aethas Sunreaver to her. My respect for Jaina and my repugnance of the disloyalty shown by the council will not allow me to give any support to Khadgar, and so I will accompany her in her exile, while the Alliance expends its energy fighting the wrong enemy. I used to be proud to wear the tabard and insignia of the Kirin Tor. I hope the day will come again when I can feel that pride.

Caving in

An aside from "Alternative Chat" (in You're history) caught my eye today:

"... the moment last year when Blizzard caved on allowing flying in Draenor. That shows a group of people that if they complained long and hard enough, the Company would realise the error of their ways and simply concede to demand"

The precise moment when I realized that Blizzard will always cave in was back when patch 3.1 got to the PTR, and people discovered that Blizzard had fixed a particular abuse of instances that was called "ghetto hearthing". Prior to patch 3.1, if you joined a group, entered an instance and then left the group, after 60 seconds you would be teleported to wherever your hearthstone was set to. Of course this exploit was a terrible abuse of the adventurers in the instance, who would then be forced to find a replacement, or try to 4-man it.

This was before the dungeon finder and queuing for instances, so if often meant that one person had to leave the instance, head to Dalaran or another city and ask in LFG* (or trade) for a replacement while their comrades waited patiently at the summoning stone.

You might wonder what sort of self-important, entitled ass-hole would inflict such a hardship on their fellow adventurers just because his hearthstone is on cooldown and wants to get home quickly. Well, it turns out that it's exactly the sort of self-important, entitled ass-hole who sees nothing wrong in this exploit and whines on the forums for it to be retained! I could hardly believe that anybody who actually did this would be shameless enough to demand its retention; but lo, the forums were full of whines and complaints.

But instead of just telling these whiners that this was an exploit and the exploit has been fixed (well, to be fair, they did repeat that line for about a week), the developers decided to halve the cooldown on hearthstones instead, teaching everyone that whining works.

It was therefore no surprise to me at the start of the Cataclysm, when instances were "too hard" for the poor babies, that they would whine about it and demand that Blizzard fix it so that they could enter instance and get loot without having to work for it. Blizzard held out.  They made the point that at the end of WotLK instances seemed easier to complete simply because everyone was overgeared for them, and these new Cataclysm dungeons would get easier as people upgeared. To nerf them would make them just too easy once people actually had appropriate gear. I was proud of Blizzard, sticking to their guns for a change. They held out for almost a month before they caved in and nerfed the instances.

With Draenor flying, I knew it was just a matter of time before the whingers got their way.

Of course, there is another way of looking at this: Blizzard are responding to their customers. Or at least, they're responding to their whiny customers. Perhaps I need to get with the program and start complaining more on the forums.


*The "Looking For Group" chat channel.

Lost lands

Pearl River, Dragon Ridge, Province, Hidden Village, Severogorsk, Komarin, Northwest, South Coast. I miss these battlegrounds in World of Tanks. All withdrawn and no longer playable in public random matches. I have fond memories of playing them. Even Port. 

Unbalanced? I don't know. What I do know is that I'm bored seeing the same few maps pop up again and again. I'd like some variation. A little variation is better than a little imbalance. Or how would it be if Wargaming.net were to tweak these maps to ameliorate them, rather than ditching them.

I wonder if I'll ever miss Overlord and Stalingrad, though. I doubt it.

Legion release date

Well, I got back from a sailing trip to learn that my guess on when Legion would be released was way off. Even though the film is already out in Ireland, the release of the expansion is three months away, so there isn't much of a tie-in with the film (perhaps the idea is to give new players time to learn).

All the same, I wonder why it was so important to drop all work on Warlords of Draenor, and leave existing players with not much to do for over a year. Worse, the WoD expansion was left unfinished, with Farahlon still missing from the map of alternative Draenor. I could understand Blizzard dropping everything WoD-related if it was important to hit a date that linked up Legion with the film, but it seems that was never the plan.

Anyway, I see, from one of the film's trailers, that the director understands that to form a shield wall, you need to have shields equipped. Unlike Blizzard.