Reader Vid is from Croatia ("the homeland of Niko Bellic from GTA IV," he says), and he sent us this t-shirt he found in his closet. He's had it for a few years, but just recently noticed the emblem sitting on the chest pocket -- if it makes you want to grab your sword and fight the Horde, you're right. It's a slimmed down version of the Human Kingdom of Lordaeron symbol (although most of Lordaeron is now held by the Forsaken, but no mind -- the blue and gold are a widespread symbol of the Alliance).

Of course, how that symbol ended up on a cruise t-shirt, Fordragon knows. If the Lordaeron insignia is a reference to any real symbol in real life, we couldn't find it. Vid says the patch wasn't added by him, and it's been on the shirt since he owned it. Interesting -- either someone at S&A is a Warcraft fan, or there's a real-world link here we're missing. That's a nice t-shirt you got there, cousin!

Here's a nice tidbit from the Games convention at Leipzig, Germany in the form a bundle of Wrath news. Tom Chilton and J. Allen Brack gave a pair of interviews to Getbuffed.de and Gamona.de. In the Getbuffed interview embedded above, they discuss the future of the lore and raids, most notably Icecrown Glacier, the home of Arthas.

I know, you're thinking "wait a minute, I'm already a human, aren't I? Isn't roleplaying a human in WoW just like being a human in real life -- plus some sword and sorcery, minus some boring office jobs and unpleasant bodily functions?" The answer is no, it's not so simple -- there's a bit of history and culture at work in Azerothian human society that all roleplayers of human characters need to be aware of. Otherwise, it's easy to fall into the trap of inconsistency with the Warcraft lore and the roleplaying that everyone else is trying to do within it.

Suppose for example that you say "Hi! My name is Walter and I was raised on a farm. Now I've come to Stormwind to have adventures and become a hero!" You may find the never-seen-danger-before style of new hero interesting to roleplay, but it would be very unlikely to find such a human in the actual Warcraft lore: ever since the orcs first came through the portal 30 years or so prior to the setting of our game, every human nation has suffered terribly as the human race barely survived 3 huge waves of devastating warfare, with some whole nations of humans completely wiped out. No human growing up in that time would have been untouched by the conflict -- and if you want to roleplay a human, you ought to know about it.

Similar issues exist for all the available player races in WoW; there are certain details about your race's history that you need to know in order to roleplay well. So today we will provide you with the basic knowledge you need to be a human. We'll leave the in-depth lore to other columns, though -- today is just a basic roleplayer's primer on one race, with other races to follow in the future.

As you may have noticed in the latest patch, workers in Stormwind are busy building Stormwind Harbor, a relatively large addition that will give us a convenient boat dock to get up to Northrend. As an aside, is Stormwind going to be the Alliance jumping-off point for all expansions? It's already the most convenient capital to the Dark Portal, as well as (I think) the only city with trainers for all classes. Anyway, it's my favorite city, so I don't really mind, but still – when's Ironforge or poor Darnassus going to get some love?

What was I talking about? Oh right, I have here a beautiful gallery of screenshots of Stormwind Harbor, its boats, and a lighthouse that seems to be on the way out of the city. The Harbor will offer non-stop trips to the Borean Tundra in Northrend, as well as to Auberdine (the current boat in Menethil is being re-routed, and Menethil will now connect only to Theramore). This should make it much less painful for low-level Alliance characters to travel between the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor – "no more Wetlands Deathflop," as one Blizzard CM put it.

I really like the look of the the boats, too, with the big paddle wheel and the gryphon prow. It's always nice to see a little more steampunk in my WoW. Come on in and check out the beautiful scenery, and thanks to Kevin from WoW Macros for providing all these lovely screenshots.

Of course there's a lot of bad blood between Horde and Alliance, but every once in a while we work together. About half of the times I've done the Ring of Blood quest line in Nagrand I've seen Horde and Alliance fighting side-by-side. There are some other quests that seem to promote this behavior like "Even Gronn have Standards" and "The Skettis Offensive." Some things just bring out our cooperative souls.

Sometimes we just find ourselves compelled to do nice things. Sukalin of EU-Anarchronos told a tale of a complete stranger coming to his rescue:
Just a few minutes ago, I was running down through Stranglethorn Vale on my 20 Warlock, so I could get to Booty Bay and eventually The Barrens to do my Succubus quest. I kept getting attacked by beasts and dying, though.

About a quarter of the way down I was attacked by a tiger and was reduced to about 5% health when a Troll Shaman called Ayisah shocked the tiger and saved me! I was grateful, of course, and expressed my gratitude in the form of emotes - but in addition to that she helped me travel down the rest of the zone by following close behind me on my way to Booty Bay.

If you're a Lore Nerd like Alex and I are, you've probably at least been following the storyline of the World of Warcraft Comic, and you know it's likely going to have a pretty big impact on WoTLK lore, as King Varian Wrynn returns and we finally get an end to the Missing Diplomat Storyline.

Issue #9 continues the journey of Lo'gosh and his companions as they travel toward Ironforge and brings a familiar old villain into the light as well. Blizzard has posted the first few pages of the issue on the official WoW site.

I have to admit, I have one major reservation about the story.

Okay, it's time to come clean. One of the writers here at WoW Insider biased. He prefers one of the factions in World of Warcraft over the other. He's tried both factions... has 70's in both... and has played out most of the quest content and raided most of the 60 and 70 raids both Horde and Alliance side, and in the end, he's come to one conclusion.

I've no doubt fooled all of you with my cunning use of the second person pronoun here (note: it was third person, genius), and... I didn't? You all knew I was talking about myself? Dang. Well, on with it: while I love my tauren warrior and have a blast playing my orc shaman, I really prefer Alliance over Horde. I personally have no difficulty leveling on one side or the other of the factional wall, but in general, I find the Horde quests can veer into unpleasant, even outright evil extremes that I don't like participating in. What's funny about this is, aside from a few quests I really don't like, I can't find any functional reason for my preference. I have met and played with good people on both factions, which is why I leveled two toons to 70 and another into his 60's over there (Consummate Vees, woo hoo!) and I really can't say that I prefer one faction's cities over the other. My two favorite races in the game are Tauren and Draenei, with Orcs and Humans as my second choices partially out of tradition and partially for stature reasons since I play warriors a lot.

Neutrality in factions started with the Steamwheedle Cartel and only got worse. It seems that once you get to the level cap, most of the intense rivalry between the factions, at least as expressed in the PvE game, peter off to nothing. Almost every faction accepts both Horde and Alliance fighters. In Burning Crusade, they even share the same capital, and it looks like that will be happening again in WoTLK with Dalaran -- despite that fact that, 50 levels earlier, the Horde utterly devastated Dalaran's holdings in Silverpine Forest and Hillsbrad.

The general argument for this change is that at higher levels, most people learn to put aside their differences and fight the greater challenges that threaten to wipe both sides out. My problem with that line of reasoning is that up until the end game, what we're trying to wipe out is each other.

In the Ghostlands, the Night Elves are involved in extensive operations to attack the Blood Elves. In Ashenvale, the Horde is constantly attacking the Night Elves, including setting up spy posts and killing their animal companions. In the southern Barrens, the Dwarves are willing to wipe out the Tauren to set up their excavations. In Lordaeron, the Forsaken have the stated intent of wiping out the alliance, devastating one settlement and even making a preliminary attack against Southshore.

Uhohhotdog of Mathrezim has a leveling problem. In the General Discussion forum he announced that fails whenever he tries to level an Alliance character. He asked if others have this problem. Secksie of Tanaris said that she has the same problem, only she can't seem to manage to roll Horde.

It looks like the issues is not so much faction pride as friends and familiarity. Probably the most important factor is having friends or guildies to play with on the other side. Millaneous of Norgannon said that he doesn't care which side he plays, as long as he's playing with friends. Rummi of Ysera finds difficulty in breaking the link with his main character when playing on Alliance side. It's kind of Lonely and outside of one's established element.

Or, how to celebrate the birth of a nation via an ugly series of Horde losses in Arathi Basin:

1. Every single Alliance character in the game has a Black War Tiger.

2. Every single Horde character in the game has a Black War Raptor (yes, myself included).

3. I could be wrong, but I don't think "Lich King" is pronounced "Lick King," as I keep hearing it pronounced on my server.

4. However, it might be because the word looks somewhat Germanic, and I will be unable to keep a straight face for the duration of the next expansion.

5. To the point of losing it completely if I hear "World of Warcraft: WRAAAAAAATH OF THE LICK KING" intoned by the Deep-Voiced Serious Trailer Guy.

6. How male human characters run. There's a lot of great animation in the game. This is not one of them.

7. Practically every main-tank of every Hordeside raiding guild is a male Tauren.

8. An egotistical male Tauren. Look, Spanky, just because Bulwark of Azzinoth is bigger on you than anybody else does not mean that the same is true of appendages elsewhere.

Recruiting isn't what I'd call a fun past time. Ever since server transfers exploded on the scene, it's not unusual for our guild's officers to spend 30 min to an hour per day scanning the WoW Guild Recruitment forums (Alliance and Horde flavors). With summer hitting, no major content in the immediate future, and what I'd like to call the 3rd Year Burnout affecting players, recruitment is more important than ever to keep a guild's progress going.

There are a lot of options out there to find people LFG, but the WoW Guild Recruitment forums continue to be the largest source of potential class replacements. They're not perfect, though. For one, you'll spend more time trying to find the class you're looking for than actually posting replies to viable recruits. And with the speed at which new posts are made (20 minutes after you post, you're on page 5), it can be extremely daunting trying to keep up with them all.

Join me after the jump to learn how WoW Lemmings has changed all that.

Today is the 50th post of Totem Talk on this site. I haven't written all of them... I started out as the warrior columnist for WoW Insider (by the way, if you're wondering, yes the warrior column will be tomorrow, sorry for juggling everything) and only took over the shaman column because Robin Torres, our predecessor and the first person to give you a shaman column here, was unable to continue writing it. I snapped up the chance to take over, because the shaman class was the one that effectively saved World of Warcraft for me. (I promise, next week we'll continue our gear guide series, but this week I'm inclined to wax philosophical about shamans.)

It's not a secret that I play a lot of warriors, and tank a lot. For the longest time, my pattern was fairly simple: start a warrior alt to play with friends on a new server, blaze to 60 ahead of them as I am an expert on leveling a warrior, start getting bored waiting for them to catch up and end up going back to my original warrior because I have a reputation as a tank and get recruited to do it. I would tank for a while (in one notorious case, 'a while' was 'from Molten Core to Naxxramas) while waiting for my RL friends to catch up to max level so we could start running instances.

It got old. I enjoyed the tanking, but I hated the waiting. I'm not terribly patient. In one notorious instance I actually rolled another warrior, caught him up to them as they leveled, then leveled him to 60, meaning that I had two max level warriors rotting on Kilrogg. It got ridiculous. During all this time, I finally met folks who were playing horde side, and started a new toon to hang out with them on Malfurion. Yes, it was a warrior.

But a funny thing happened on the way to 60 on him. On a whim, I started an orc shaman. And I hated it.

You may remember that we announced that a Brewfest Kodo was hidden in the WoTLK Alpha files some time ago. With patch 2.4.3, the Kodo did in fact get into this year's Brewfest. The Brewfest is currently open for testing on the PTR, and you can see the Kodos for yourselves - but only on the Horde side.

That's right. Blizzard has added the Kodo mount, but not in the way many of us had hoped. The Ram mount is now available for purchase only on the Alliance side, and the Kodo mount only on the Horde side. Kisirani has confirmed that this is intended. She says that they came to this decision only after much deliberation, but it's likely staying, although she'll listen to constructive criticism. As you can imagine, this has not been well received.

Hi.

I know we're all excited about Season 4. Some of us are stockpiling arena points and trying to get our ratings up, while others are taking the opportunity to gear up some alts in Season 2 gear as soon as it moves to honor. And that's great, there's something for everyone. But it also seems, at least on the servers I play on, to be leading to some frayed tempers in the battlegrounds. So let's chat about what is, and what isn't, appropriate and useful for getting yourself some honor in the BG's.

First off, and I can't say this one enough as a general piece of advice for any battleground, yelling, calling people names, and spamming macros does not actually make you Sun Tzu. It can be very annoying when your WSG turns into a 45 minute turtle with no flag captures, or your AV run becomes mired down because yet again everyone rushed RH instead of taking and holding Iceblood Graveyard, but no matter how creative your insults get, the tide of battle will not turn. The other players in the battleground are not going to say "you know, Matsakillza is right, I really am a total noob" and even if they did, how would that possibly improve how the match is progressing? It won't. It just makes you look like a petulant child throwing a fit because something didn't go your way.

Now that we've gotten that bit of general advice out of the way, let's move on to specific examples from each battleground, linking to our own Zach Yonzon's thoughts on each as we do.