"Gnomes vs Tauren" - Including Offensive Gnome Lurv

I would call the Gnomes vs Tauren event a success, not just because the tauren eventually died, but also because I made it as far as to hug Garrosh and fought alongside the lvl 1 expert and co-blogger – Döra.

In my clever’dom I was convinced that choosing a rogue was a genius idea: “because then I wouldn’t run out of mana”. Despite my efforts to foresee some of the issues of being a caster, the difficulty of staying close to your tauren target, when you can’t find yourself in the sea of gnomes, and the lag constantly puts you on the edge of a dc, made the choice of melee a really bad one. I did manage to take a few stabs at the guy though between all the misses and then I died in an aoe storm.

Estimates say there were more than 600 gnomes. It was unfortunate that I didn’t make it into the event-guild Armée de Gnomeregan. Döra, however, did and I think they were a little more generous with the English in their guild chat. Oh well, I understood the many praises at the end, and some words are just used more broadly across servers, “GOGOGO” never fails.

Gallery

I used a mixture of my own screenshots and those posted on various forums in relation to the event. The same sources can be found at the bottom of the post.

On the elevator with a few other figther gnomes.

The instant I went outside, the lag and continuous dc’s began, making it almost impossible for me and Gniggle (aka Döra) to communicate.

Charging towards the designated spot where rumours said there was a sacrificial tauren to be slain.

Dressed as a Twilight Cultist, the tauren finally went down…

…But so did we. Someone was probably biting their lip while hovering a finger over their aoe button – I can’t blame them.

What a somber capture – we died, but we ressurected en mass to flood the land anew.

Lenwë, one of the people arranging the event, is giving out orders in both French and English dressed for the occasion in a tux.

Then everyone took off on our long Marathon, from Ironforge, through the Tram to Stormwind over Stranglethorn Vale to Orgrimmar.

For a brief moment, the Tram was actually in a state of real Rush Hour.

Everyone was jumping, I assume gnomes love train rides.

No time for a guided tour around Stormwind.

People started dinging in front of me right near the edge of an exploration spot. That was actually a very captivating sight.

Lots of French chat that I didn’t understand, but in the upper corner I’m dinging lvl 2.

A Horde point of view of the gnome army crowding Duskwood.

A trail of ants or gnomes? Tomato, tomahto I guess.

Booty Bay dock, waiting to get on the ship.

This time we got attacked a few times. But I was lucky and made it on to the boat with only two deaths.

At this point, I think everyone had gone slightly insane, the heat, the cold. Frantic gnomes shooting at anything that moved.

I remember seeing “Jonyjones” a few times during the event. I hope they didn’t torture the poor guy, he was so brave.

Me, Gniggle and a few others starting corpse-running to get further and further into Orgrimmar.

Orgrimmar grunts are incredibly fast at gnome-execution these days, so most of the distance was traversed in ghost-form.

I’m lying at the right side of Garrosh. Notice the carpeting of gnomes on his throne. He didn’t give me time to explain that I just wanted to hug him.

So I hugged him as a martyr. Success!

I was very impressed by the escorting by our Alliance guards. Having guards and escorts are often crucial to these kinds of events, especially when the slightest amount of PvP is involved. The Strongest of the Horde Rp-PvP event also had a ton of allied guards on both sides of the factions. Without them, such events usually crumble as everyone becomes scattered and the unity dissolves. I was suspecting that could happen, as an army of lvl 1 gnomes can’t defend itself very well, but due to good planning and reliable co-players, Team G.O., who arranged it, made sure everything went smoothly.

I’ve always been a strong believer in death in games as more than just a temporary suspension of play. As my early days in WoW was spent doing a lot of PvP, I always saw more symbolism in killing and being killed by another player. This event was probably the first time that I didn’t find it to be a big deal at all. Everyone died all the time in what could have been a horrible gnome genocide mass grave, but I quickly got over the unfair aoe blast of a lvl 85 horde and resumed fighting, it really did just feel like a small pause, nothing else. Even when it happened later in Stranglethorn Vale, where another portion was taken down by a warlock, I didn’t mind. I stood in the middle of the dead corpses to get a screenshot, and of course that’s like baiting, so I was also killed and awarded with the top-spot of the pile. Maybe I can use this experience to subvert some of my uglier sides that peek out when I PvP.

Corpse-running our way into Orgrimmar was surprisingly entertaining. In Garrosh’ throne room, several hordes were present, some saying prayers for our dead gnome bodies, as the guards swiftly shot us down. Garrosh himself was not up for our chatty tea party, he’s much more of a hack and slasher I’d say. We came in good faith, the fellow gnome Killbull blew him around 10 kisses, Gniggle cheered, whereas I hugged him twice. Offensive gnome lurv made Garrosh miffed! But then I see on Döra’s video, caught red handed, that she tried to cast a shadowbolt at him – well that explains a lot!

Other Resources

Döra’s write up including her Event Video (Ignore my spamming of her)

The Official “Gnomes vs Tauren” event video by Lenwë, one of the organizers of Team G.O.

Another video by Tobynou named Invasion Orgrimmar.

The Team G.O. forum thread, which has a broad collection of screenshots, some of which I used in my gallery.

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