I know you all come here for thoughtful, insightful, intelligent blogging about relevant issues, but unfortunately Larisa went on holiday and left Ixo and me pulling the pints. I really tried, I promise I did, I read, like, srs blogs ‘n’ shit … but then I gave up and decided to roll up a Tribute Gnome instead, because the pink pigtail inn doesn’t feel like itself without a gnome in it.

I was even going to have pink pigtails of my very own. I got as far as pink (check) but I didn’t get as far pigtails because I found something even better.



Is that not the most awesome hair you’ve ever seen? I mean that is some serious hair; that hair means business. You wouldn’t want to meet it down a dark alley late at night. And naturally my gnome needed a serious name to match her serious hair: and thus Anklebane, the proud gnome warrior was born.

I even made her a FlagRSP description and everything:



I’ve never played a gnome before, except as part of the SAN gnome rally, so it was genuinely a new experience and a complete change perspective. I feel rather like Larisa did, when she wrote about her experiences Horde-side. I don’t, truthfully, think I’m a gnome at heart (I couldn’t be a healer, after all, well, not until Cataclysm…) and I don’t normally have much patience for the self-consciously cutsey but my first thoughts on finding myself in Dun Morogh, armed only with my srs hair, my courage and a hilariously over-sized sword were:

1. omg I’m tiny
2. omg I’m adorable

Larisa has often written of the sheer joy of being a gnome, and there is a contagious merriment in the way they move, and their excitable voices. I am not a massively physical player. I mean obviously I can get myself out of the bad stuff speedily enough but some people really do seem to inhabit their avatars, running and leaping about, and expressing themselves. Perhaps it’s because, in my deepest heart I’m a Tauren, and therefore I’m always afraid of banging my mighty cow head on the ceiling or standing on somebody’s toe or elbowing a fragile zombie in the face or something. Given that Blizzard have a really bad habit of designing their landscapes slightly too small for the average Tauren, it’s no wonder we’re physically self-conscious.

But not gnomes: I could bounce, and run around in circles, forever.

I’ve also discovered the most happy-making button in the entirety of WoW. It’s this one.



I don’t think I’ll ever get bored of pressing it, and watching my gnome zoom fiercely into the knees of an oncoming foe. I might even have macro-ed “RAAWRRRRR” to it.

But it soon became apparent that Anklebane needed a sidekick, err, I mean equal partner, to stand behind her in a sissy robe since her recklessness kept leading her into trouble (I might have have at one point joyously jumped her off a mountain into a bear). So, without further ado, let me introduce Azeroth's Most Disproportionate Duo: Together They Fight Crime, I Mean Kill Level 5 Boars:



His hairstyle was specifically chosen for being too large for Chas's widescreen monitor. We are srs about hair, Alliance-side. And, of course, there had to be a matching flagRSP description:



I know it shouldn’t surprise me after nearly two years of WoW but I am always amazed at just how much the game changes when you wear a different skin. It’s not just a matter of perspective, but it’s how you react to the different aspects of the game world. Even the most banal of starting-area quests can seem unimaginably heroic to a gnome with the right attitude.



Click here for a full sized version of my valiant gnome delivering the mail! I don’t know what it is about being so small but you can just feel the energy and enthusiasm radiating off her as she scampers towards the quest giver.

And I’ve never had any particular affinity for those ridiculous mechanical chicken things – they always looked rickety and absurd to me, and not in a quirky, interesting way either. Anklebane, however, took one look a green mechanostrider and was instantly in love – which suggests that the most likely profession for her is should be engineering, even if only for the rocket boots. Of course, Twinklehoof just didn’t get it but thankfully the NPCs were more than willing to contribute to the debate:



How right you are, Pilot Bellowfiz!

It’s moments like these that remind me how rich WoW can be. I think caught between one expansion, anticipating another, it’s very easy for the world to feel stale and to spiral down into familiar struggles against the same raid content. I’m looking forward to Cataclysm, because I’m hoping in taking us back to world we’ve forgotten – the world we all first fell in love with – it’ll help us re-discover the joy in it. And the simple pleasures of being new and discovering things – like the pleasure of an ability you’ve never used before, the discovery of an NPC who says exactly what you want to say at exactly the right time, or the profound importance of having The Most Awesome Hair In The Whole Game.

The male Draenei dance, however, is another matter entirely. Despite having raided with a spacegoat or two in my time, this was actually the first time I've ever had in unleashed on my unprepared person. Ye Gods. That was a side of Azeroth I could have lived in blissful harmony never having witnessed.



I could go on endlessly about the sheer delight of levelling a pink-haired gnome warrior to level 7 but I think I will simply conclude this post with some words of Draenish wisdom (brace yourselves):