I’ve never chosen which races I play based on racial abilities, but rather aesthetics. While that certainly flies in the face of my other “power gamer” tendencies, it’s something I’m fairly adamant about. Throughout my role-playing career (both on table-top games and in MMOs), I’ve played some variety of elf whenever possible. However, I’m also an “alt-aholic”, which means sooner or later I’ll be forced to roll something other than an elf simply because some classes aren’t available to elves.

For example, I have a Human Mage, Human Warlock and Human Paladin for that very reason. Of course, I could have rolled Blood Elves for those classes, but I prefer Alliance-side. Not because I have anything in particular against the Horde (I’ve got more little Horde alts running around than I can count), but because Alliance-side is where most of my friends are. With some changes coming in Cataclysm (yes, this is where I talk about some of the things I actually like about the upcoming expansion), I’ll have the opportunity to address this discrepancy in my alt-rolling habits.

New Classes Opening Up to Night Elves

It has been announced that in Cataclysm, previously unavailable classes will be opening up to existing races. Of particular interest to me are the classes opening up to Night Elves. At the moment, there’s only one new class opening up to Night Elves which happens to coincide with a relatively low-level alt I have: Mages. My current Mage is a level 33 Human, so rerolling her would not be any sort of great hardship. It seems likely that I’ll keep my current Mage, level her to 39 and turn off experience gains to use her as a PvP toon (since Frost PvP is really freaking fun) and level another Night Elf Mage as a “serious” PvE toon.

I had hoped that Night Elves would also pick up Warlocks, but I can see why that wasn’t done despite my disappointment. But, that brings me to my next point:

Worgen

I can’t tell you how excited I am about Worgen becoming a playable race. No, not because I’m some sort of Underworld fan girl. (Although, I did like the movies.) Part of the reason is that I’ve always liked the lore surrounding the Worgen. Shadowfang Keep has long been one of my favorite instances in the game. (And yes, I’m supremely happy that it’s getting a Heroic mode in Cataclysm. I hope they continue the trend and do the same for all the vanilla instances.)

The other part of the reason I’m excited about this is decidedly immature. One of my favorite things about running Karazhan “back in the day” was the Torment of the Worgen book that would periodically turn you into a rampaging Worgen. It was so cute! I loved it! Folks that used to run Karazhan with me can attest, any time it proc’d I would squeal with glee like a little girl. (I also like the Planning for the Future quest purely because the little pups you have to pick up are cute as all get-out.)

Of course, my delight over being able to play Worgen begs the questions: which classes will I reroll? Will I forsake Night Elves in favor of Worgen?

Rerolling Characters

Well, let me answer the second question first, since it’s the easiest: No. I will not forsake Night Elves in favor of Worgen (though the temptation is rather great).

To answer the first question, let’s take a look at which classes will be available to Worgen:

• Death Knight
• Druid
• Hunter
• Mage
• Priest
• Rogue
• Warlock
• Warrior

Now, of those eight classes, I have five Night Elf characters over level 40 (which is my personal cut-off point for whether or not I’m willing to reroll a character). That leaves me with one pre-existing Night Elf alt that I could conceivably reroll, once class that I’ve already talked about rerolling as a Night Elf, and one class that’s completely unavailable to Night Elves.

I currently have three Human characters, one of which is well beyond the point at which I would be willing to reroll (and isn’t available to Worgen or Night Elves anyway) and two others that I do plan to reroll. In the case of my Warlock, the answer is simple: she’ll become a Worgen. My Mage, however, presents an interesting conundrum: do I reroll as a Night Elf or a Worgen? And what about my Warrior? She’s under my reroll cut-off point, but she’s already a Night Elf. Would I rather add another Worgen character to my roster (and give myself a Worgen that isn’t a caster), or keep the Night Elf I already have?

Honestly, I’m not sure. As I’ve mentioned, I don’t choose character races based on racial abilities but rather aesthetics. Sure, that’s not the min-maxiest (it’s a word, now!) way to go about things, but that’s the way I like doing it, so nyah!

One nice thing about rerolling my Humans as Worgen is that there’s plenty of lore fodder to build up a nice RP back-story for the characters and their racial switch.

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