On The Other Side

ugh these are all YOUR friends

I primarily play horde, but I've attempted to level alliance characters before. I never had one at max until Mists, which was encouraged by the [Double Agent] achievement.

Even though my brother and I started playing World of Warcraft at the same time, we started out playing opposite factions on different servers. I tried to level an alliance character on his server but only got to level 44 before completely losing interest.

Coincidentally, that character was a warlock and he began my tradition of never quite getting a warlock to max level (until Mists!) despite trying many times.

While I know the ins and outs of leveling, where all the quest hubs are, where to find NPCs, and every low level dungeon quest off the top of my head, when I start leveling an alliance character, it's like I've entered another dimension.

all of these houses look the same

It's the same game, but suddenly, I have no idea where to quest, I have to ask guards for everything, I don't even know how to travel to different continents, some dungeons have quests that never had any before, and forget about how many times I've died by right clicking on the horde flight path master in a neutral town or running headlong into a horde hub.

I've never been in a Gnomeregan where we didn't immediately jump down onto the gear below at the instance entrance, but every time I do it on alliance, we go an entirely different route and I have no idea what's going on.

It's pretty fascinating suddenly having this realization that an entire half of the player base is experiencing the game differently from you. Even raid instances like Dragon Soul had a different ring to them, not to mention what Siege of Orgrimmar must be like from an alliance player's perspective. Did alliance players even know what that Barrens Chat joke was about?

Zones with faction specific questing hubs have a different feel and objective, and some of the quests aren't even direct mirrors of each other. Alliance quests have me doing entirely different things in the same areas, sometimes ignoring mobs I'm used to killing. There have been times where I gathered up quests in a familiar area and left to kill a bunch of the related quest mobs, only to start realizing I'm not getting any credit for anything or looting any relevant items.

Some people are very adverse to playing on the other side, due to either faction pride, stubbornness, or just a lack of interest. I have to say, it's quite the adventure, though getting used to gnomes is pretty tough.