Level 2: Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Already? Wow, that didn't last long.

An explanation. The Northeast part of the United States is in the midst of the most inconvenient winter in recent memory, and I've lost track of the number of times that I've had to shovel my wife and I out of our house. This particular morning, we woke up with 6-7 inches on the ground already, and in order to make it out and to work on time, I had to forgo my usual morning workout. "No problem," I thought, "I'll just do it when I get home from work." I'm happy to say, however, that I got a call at work from my wife, who, after a visit to the doctor was given a clean bill of health after testing possibly positive for a fatal disease a few weeks prior. So we went out to celebrate. I still stuck to my diet, and shoveled twice, for about 75 minutes total time, so back off.

She would grow up to become the pop sensation, Jem.

Before its two expansions, Gnomes were the most divisive race in the game. More than any other race in the game, you either loved them or hated them. People who loved them found them adorable, and due to some pretty strong racial bonuses, extremely powerful in certain roles. People who hated them cited how freaky they could look, their annoying high-pitched voices, and their difficulty to kill in battle, due to their short height. For some Horde players, the sight of a gnome was akin to a Beatrix Kiddo wigout.

Alliance players would soon know the feeling

Prior to Cataclysm, the Gnomes shared a starting area with Dwarves. This was due to the Gnome leader being ousted out of their underground city by one of his subordinates, who combined some dangerous machinery with an army of troggs to seize power. In the Gnomish tradition of changing a lightbulb with a flamethrower, the Gnomes attempted to stop the attack by detonating weapons of mass destruction to lay waste to their enemies. Just one problem; they detonated them inside their own city.

It was the only way to be sure.

Early Gnome quests had you dealing with an ever-increasing population of hostile cave trolls, an encounter with a larcenous Yeti, and even some recon missions to the quarantined outer edges of the bombed-out city.