Azeroth Choppers Discussion Thread (All Azeroth Chopper Discussion here, thanks)

[Goundin]

Both bikes are decent and I play both sides so it doesn't bother me which won, but the Horde bike is by far the better of the two. And I believe like others that both bikes will be in-game, not to make the Alliance fan base happy, but because I think they had planned to release both bikes anyway.

[Anzaman]

Both bikes are decent and I play both sides so it doesn't bother me which won, but the Horde bike is by far the better of the two. And I believe like others that both bikes will be in-game, not to make the Alliance fan base happy, but because I think they had planned to release both bikes anyway.

Personally, I'd wish that they would say something about this situation instead of being silent and simply locking the threads.

What do Blizzard benefit from our rage and hatred between Alliance-Blizzard-Horde, or is it some way to distract the hate into it instead of "late" expansion launch?

[Deleted]

A few Blizzcons ago he said it on stage with his band. People look for reasons to be offended. I don't know why...

It wasn't even Samwise who said it. It was that guy from Cannibal Corpse they brought up on stage for a song. And it was on a tape they played to introduce him.

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I think this generally typifies the difference between the two factions. Horde look at the rivalry from a slightly more 'grudging respect, but still don't like you' angle, while Alliance have a more 'low self esteem, we're always the victim' mentality.

"Grudging respect" lol. Speak for yourself, sonny. They're laughable specimens every one of them.

[Deleted]

Some Horde players would still have complained about losing to Alliance, that's guaranteed fact.

TBH this fanbase would complain even if Metzen and Sammy personally appeared at their place, handed them a bag of various goodies and told them they'd get both the bikes.

[Anzaman]

TBH this fanbase would complain even if Metzen and Sammy personally appeared at their place, handed them a bag of various goodies and told them they'd get both the bikes.

Thanks, almost ruined my monitor with drink.

Made me laugh "a bit".

[Goundin]

Personally, I'd wish that they would say something about this situation instead of being silent and simply locking the threads.

What do Blizzard benefit from our rage and hatred between Alliance-Blizzard-Horde, or is it some way to distract the hate into it instead of "late" expansion launch?

With them being silent and locking the threads and having people get mad, it will cause them to add both bikes. They'll announce it at Blizzcon and be like. "We have some amazing WoD news for you. *long pause, Metzen looks around* "Alliance gets their bike as well." *Alliance fan-base cheers, Horde fan-base boos*

People are never happy and will complain over anything and everything. We are a greedy, needy, whiny race. We're like Garrosh, minus the whole Sha heart thing...No, this heart is not special. *stares* Get. Away. From. MY HEART!

[Darththeo]

I see both bikes in game ... Horde gets their bike free while the Alliance bike is either paid for (which is more than likely) or given as part of a long quest line (which honestly, I would be okay with). The other option is that both get them for nothing and maybe the alliance waits for patch 6.1 or something.

[Treno]

I'd be baffled if they didn't add both bikes to the game at some point. I was really surprised Morhaime didn't end it with something to the effect of, "Well, it looks like the Horde won, but we can't in good faith let a bike as cool as the Alliance's just not make it into the game. Both bikes will be added in Patch 6.X!"

Between this, the fact that both bikes have been modeled for in game, and the advertisement keeps emphasizing the winning side gets a "Free" bike, this is likely to be the case. However, they're likely to not say anything till closer to 6.0, to lessen it undermining the entire competition.

[Chudah]

Between this, the fact that both bikes have been modeled for in game, and the advertisement keeps emphasizing the winning side gets a "Free" bike, this is likely to be the case. However, they're likely to not say anything till closer to 6.0, to lessen it undermining the entire competition.

I am fine with paying for the bike as long as it doesn't cost real money to get. Make it purchasable in the game for gold, but I will not spend my hard earned cash for something that the other half of the player base gets for free.

[Scufflegrit]

I can't honestly see them putting the losing bike in the shop for real money. Stop and think about that for a minute. "You can get the winner for free... but you can buy the loser for real world money! What a deal!!" Yeah, that just doesn't work. Blizzard and the bike would both be ripped a new one for something like that.

They built the "bike" frames completely beforehand and then finished them with almost no real input from Blizzard and none from the players. You know what I wish they'd done with the competition? Let the competition itself be not who gets a bike, but which faction can build a better one.
Votes could only come from people who have battle.net accounts and have played WoW within the last 6 months to a year. Lock in which faction we'd be voting for at the start to prevent people voting both sides and voting "good" for their faction and "bad" for the opposing faction. Then each week we'd vote on different pieces and/or looks for the bikes. The choices would be concept art that wouldn't actually get built until a winning piece was chosen. At the end, a final vote would open up allowing us to vote for which bike looked better.
Ultimately the players would be the ones designing the overall theme of the bikes. The Horde likely wouldn't have gotten another trike and the Alliance wouldn't have gotten that... thing.

[Lochton]

I am fine with paying for the bike as long as it doesn't cost real money to get. Make it purchasable in the game for gold, but I will not spend my hard earned cash for something that the other half of the player base gets for free.

Well, considering the whole show was made for us, I think it would be less likely for it to be real money. Though, as said, sadly don't think we'll get the losing bike even for gold.

[Anzaman]

I am fine with paying for the bike as long as it doesn't cost real money to get. Make it purchasable in the game for gold, but I will not spend my hard earned cash for something that the other half of the player base gets for free.

As long as it isn't costly, anything over 5.000 gold and I'd prefer to buy it with real life money.

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With them being silent and locking the threads and having people get mad, it will cause them to add both bikes. They'll announce it at Blizzcon and be like. "We have some amazing WoD news for you. *long pause, Metzen looks around* "Alliance gets their bike as well." *Alliance fan-base cheers, Horde fan-base boos*

I doubt many Horde would actually boo there, tbh.

Pretty much only those who are very pro-Horde/anti-Alliance.

[Dormie]

It was obvious Horde was going to win the second this event was announced

fixed for you

[Yarathir]

Not sure why I feel tempted to talk about this stuff again, but I do. So yay, I suppose.


Firstly, I want to quote something I said on MMO-C before about the voting.

I'm saying that Blizzard could have easily not used a questionable system for their voting contest, which relies on the basic assumption that you can, in most cases, expect that everyone voted just once, fairly. This doesn't imply that either side intentionally cheated and vote-botted. It just means that they could have, and the fact that they could have, when the easy, preemptive fix was easy enough, makes the whole thing illegitimate. And unnecessarily so.

And Blizzard only has themselves to blame.

This is one of the things that bothered me. The voting system was unnecessarily bad. They could have easily made a system where we had to log in on our accounts to vote, and that would mark that account, so a person couldn't vote again. It made the result more questionable than it should have been. Again, I'm not saying either side vote-botted, but from a voting contest, you should be able to expect that you can trust the results beyond a reasonable doubt, and that you can assume that nothing happened. You can't actually do so here.



Then the rest...



It was doomed to fail from the get-go, because they pretty much made two teams totally uninvolved in the actual Warcraft story and world create something that was supposed to represent the two playable factions. Rather than those choppers actually being creations that showed off the better part of the two factions, they were just plonking some junk from pictures of mostly Orcs and Humans onto a bike and said "THIS REPRESENTS YOUR FACTION NOW."


That was a mistake. In the end, six (later 5, excluding Jr. Boy's help) people who didn't actually know anything about the two factions had to create something that was supposed to make both factions feel proud. They ended up being shallow caricatures of what Blizzard considers 'The Horde' and 'The Alliance'. In other words: Orcs and Humans.


After that, they just threw some random stuff on the base idea to make it seem shinier. It just seemed tacky in the end.



This was handled the wrong way from the get-go. You can't give a bunch of people pictures of a faction (mostly only of one race and one race's architecture) and then tell those people that never even played the game to make something that represents their faction well enough for the player base to be proud of it.


What they should have done is allowed more player input. It should have been more interactive. There should have been a forum section, and a poll for several additions and parts of the bike. Like: "Wheels or treads?" and then players could decide what was better. The same would go for the layered-armour. On top of a few poll actions, players could choose "other" option and fill in what they thought should be on it. Then they could work that into a design.


Instead, there was no input from us, the most important part, those who make both factions what they are, and those who care most about the factions and are most invested in it. It was just "this is now the bike that represents your faction!".


And no one on the Alliance really identified with it. Some said "sure.. nice." and others said "ugly as hell!", but I didn't see many go "YES! THIS REALLY EMBODIES THE SPIRIT OF THE ALLIANCE!".



And in the end, we were in no way involved in it. The bike's design was pre-determined. They could have just as easily randomly shown pictures of the two bikes without the episodes and the effect would have been the same. We would have had no input in any way.


And that's just it. This wasn't for the players. This was done by the Blizzard higher-ups with skewed visions of what the factions are about, who then translated that skewed vision to a bunch of people who never had anything to do with Warcraft before that. The only part that was for the players was that we could vote, and we can see how good that voting system was.


So no, this was not an Alliance vs Horde faction contest. This was a Horde Blizzard devs vs Alliance Blizzard devs contest. We were just additions to it. Perhaps justifications for it. We were outside of the whole process. By the time we could form an opinion on the bikes, it was no longer relevant because it was too late then. It was all pre-determined, except for the results.



So for all of those who said "HORDE WINS!". No, the Horde devs won. How can you win a contest when you had no real input beyond "I vote for this.". The bike wasn't your creation. Neither bikes were. They weren't designs made out of what the fans thought were the core ideas and charms behind their factions.



So perhaps something for them to take away from this whole debacle is: if you are gonna make a contest between two factions, then make sure those two factions actually have some INPUT, and that the creations are a result of their collective ideas of what the faction should be all about. Rather than a pre-determined design that fans had no involvement in. Interactivity and inclusion. This was just "this bike is Horde, and this bike is Alliance. I know none of you decided that it was, but we did. Now choose. OH LOOK! Horde won! It's a victory for the Horde players!".



Blergh and such.


(Originally posted somewhere else. Decided to post it here to end my discussion on this stuff for once and for all. Or at least in-depth discussion. Brief, snide remarks are too fun to resist.)

[Yarathir]

If only the Alliance chopper was a little more like that. Then it would've stood a way bigger chance.

[Deleted]

This bike contest is crap. Both bikes are generic ugly crap. They should just let them make some bike that would actually look nice and could ride the real roads. This is just crap that nobody can appreciate. Why not make regular cool bike with little wow flavor than this over the top generic "faction" crap?

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[ideo=youtube;6BU_EWX9uhc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BU_EWX9uhc[/video]


If only the Alliance chopper was a little more like that. Then it would've stood a way bigger chance.

Design like this would get 10/10 from me!

[Yarathir]

This bike contest is crap. Both bikes are generic ugly crap. They should just let them make some bike that would actually look nice and could ride the real roads. This is just crap that nobody can appreciate. Why not make regular cool bike with little wow flavor than this over the top generic "faction" crap?

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Design like this would get 10/10 from me!

Same here. Just compare the two:




vs




Sure, the first chopper could use some Alliance signifiers, but then it isn't really an Alliance bike. Alliance-themed, perhaps, going by the colour scheme and the lion (then again, that's not rare at all), but if they added some Alliancey stuff to that first REAL chopper, that one would be a thousand times better than what we got.



In comparison, the Azeroth Chopper just looks.. horrible, tacky, and .. overall -- just blugh.

[arcaneshot]

Between this, the fact that both bikes have been modeled for in game, and the advertisement keeps emphasizing the winning side gets a "Free" bike, this is likely to be the case. However, they're likely to not say anything till closer to 6.0, to lessen it undermining the entire competition.

There's actually no evidence that the bikes are already done; if they were they'd have shown us already.

[Anzaman]

Same here. Just compare the two:
"Good guys" bike vs Azeroth Choppers; Alliance

Matter of taste, I prefer Blizzard's AC one.

[Lochton]

Same here. Just compare the two:




vs




Sure, the first chopper could use some Alliance signifiers, but then it isn't really an Alliance bike. Alliance-themed, perhaps, going by the colour scheme and the lion (then again, that's not rare at all), but if they added some Alliancey stuff to that first REAL chopper, that one would be a thousand times better than what we got.



In comparison, the Azeroth Chopper just looks.. horrible, tacky, and .. overall -- just blugh.

You know, I have to pick the one from Paul Jr. designs/Blizzard more than the first one. The first one doesn't feel right or fitting for a WoW universe. If I had to pick of those, the Alliance one more. First one looking too fragile for our world.. "Shit.. Dragon swiped me... Better get aw-.. crap.. it broke my chopper"