Event out of nowhere: Why the sudden nature of Operation: Gnomeregan was a mistake

The title of this post is a reference to a NSFW image which you can view here.

On Tuesday night, I participated in Operation: Gnomeregan. I stood proudly as a soldier of the Alliance alongside Gelbin Mekkatorque as we tried to take back the surface of Gnomeregan from the troggs and leper gnomes. And though fun was had by all (I'll give my full thoughts on the event on Monday), something about the whole turn of events seemed... off. But why was that? Here I was, fighting along side my allies, as well as Mekkatorque's armies and mechano fighters... say, where did those come from? And on second thought, why would Mekkatorque use a letter to tell me about an invasion that was set to occur the night after I got it. As you can tell by the title of this post, the fact that Operation: Gnomeregan came out of nowhere is what seemed off to me.

Now, you might think I'm wrong in saying that Operation: Gnomeregan came out of nowhere. There has been plenty of news about it on the various WoW fansites, as well as an official announcement on the official WoW fansite, so how can I say there wasn't any lead-up? Easily, dear readers: where was the build-up in Azeroth itself? WoW went from a stagnant world where very little was happening outside of Icecrown Citadel and practically nothing was happening outside of Northrend, to a world where the leader of an entire race decides, seemingly on a whim, to attack a city and take it back for gnomes everywhere. So quickly, High Tinker; so soon. I couldn't help but wonder: has he been planing this for a long time? Did he amass those armies in secret? Did he just pull those mechano-fighters out of a locker somewhere? And why did he have me test drive them if I wasn't even going to be able use them? (But that's a gripe for another post.)

Point is, in Azeroth itself, this grand undertaking, this significant event in the history of the Gnomish people, seemingly came out of nowhere. It started one day, and all of a sudden, it was done. No planning, no preparation aside from the few quests we did, nothing. Any planning that was done was done by the High Tinker behind closed doors, and while that is feasible, I find it hard to believe that Mekkatorque would put such a large amount of effort into this operation and then send out letters to anyone of the proper level without them first proving their worth. The whole thing just seems rushed (in-universe, mind you; I'm not making a jab at Blizzard there), and that made it rather anti-climactic.

Blizzard poster Lylirra addressed this very point in a forum post on Tuesday:

Q. Why are these events so short in duration?
A. Both Operation: Gnomeregan and Zalazane's Fall are intended to be fun in-game events that allow players to experience the continuation of the Gnomeregan Exile and Darkspear troll storylines, and we think each quest line achieves just that. As several gnomes would argue, just because something is "short" doesn't mean it's not worthwhile! ;)

They certainly nailed the fun in-game event part, but as a continuation of the Gnomergan Exile's storyline, I find that Operation: Gnomeregan just doesn't measure up, mostly because of all of the plot holes created by its brevity. Where did Mekkatorque get all of those mechano-fighters to fight his battle? How did Mekkatorque know so much about Gnomeregan's surface level without any scouting to check it out? Why did Mekkatorque launch this attack after so little planing? And if he did spend a lot of time planning, did spend time building up his mechano-forces, and did send out scouts, why would he recruit every tom, dick, and harry who was powerful enough to come and help him? With an operation of this scale, shouldn't he have tested the loyalty and ability of the forces fighting with him before sending them in? Sure, theoretically, our exploits in Northrend show that we are powerful and trustworthy, since the questlines don't allow us to be anything other than loyal to the Alliance, but no real leader would put so much trust in such rogue adventurers that he would invite them via letter to help with the operation. And even then, though the massive zerg rush was very fun, wouldn't it have been an inefficient tactic? Wouldn't it be better to have a few highly trained forces, rather than a bunch of adventurers attacking as they please? And wouldn't a leader as smart as Mekkatorque have known all this?

Now, the quests leading up to the invasion itself were a small way for us to prove our loyalty to the Gnomeregan Exiles, but if Mekkatorque had been planning this for a long time, he would have doubtless planned a better way to test our loyalty than a few quests. What could that way have been, you ask? A preparation stage. I think Operation: Gnomeregan (I would probably say the same thing about Zalazane's Fall, but I'll make no assumptions without having experienced it) should have been preceded by a week-long or more period where we would have helped Mekkatorque prepare for the invasion. Blizzard could have taken the same quests we did that led up to the invasion and stretched them out as dailies over the course of that time. This would have allowed us to help build up the mechano army, recruit soldiers to make a sizable fighting force, improve Mekkatorque's speech, and do the requisite scouting in a believable amount of time. Doing all of this would also have allowed us to build up Mekkatorque's trust, making it believable that he would trust us to fight alongside him.

I know I might be alone in this. I know I might be the only one who thinks that there wasn't enough lead-up to the event, that the plotholes are as gaping as they are, and that the whole thing was too short. But such is the life of an opinionated person, and I wouldn't put these thoughts out there were I not ready to defend them from people who disagree.