My overall thoughts on Operation: Gnomeregan

As you know if you read my last post, I have quite a few thoughts on Operation Gnomergan. Having already given my thoughts on the sudden nature of the event, I think it's time I give my general thoughts on it: what went right, what went wrong, and all that jazz. I'll start with what I thought went wrong, then end with what I thought went right so that this post can end on a high note. Obviously, I won't discuss the fact that the event came out of nowhere in the first section, since that was covered by my last post. I warn you now that this post has spoilers about the entire event, so if you plan on participating in the event yourself, please don't read on any farther.

The bad:

-We test tanks that we never end up driving
As part of the questline for Operation: Gnomeregan, we perform diagnostic tests on mechano-fighters before the battle starts. We tests their weapons, their attacks, and the ejection seat, all of which are mapped to different buttons. The whole thing felt like something we had seen before at the Argent Tournament: a training mission. Those quests felt like they were preparing us to take those tanks into battle. And then the battle came... and we fought on foot. Now, I had no issue with us fighting on foot, and fighting on foot was very fun, but after testing those tanks to make sure they work and practicing with them, it's a bit disappointing to never use them.

-Underwhelming ending
This where the spoilers really come in. At the end of Operation: Gnomeregan, Mekkatorque and his adventurers reach a radiation bomb like the one that originally poisoned Gnomeregan. Turns out Thermaplugg put it there hoping to wipe us out, but rather than telling us that himself, he sends his "Brag-Bot" to tell us about it. The fact that we never get to lay a finger on or even see the infamous traitor is disappointing enough, but it gets worse. The event ends with the bomb going off and us players being teleported back to Tinker Town before it does, as we are greeted with a cutscene of the entrance of Gnomeregan with radiation flooding out. Once we are back in Tinker Town, the event ends with this monologue:

High Tinker Mekkatorque says: Curses! We had to fall back. But Thermaplugg's lost, and he knows it...he's only bought himself time.
High Tinker Mekkatorque says: We hold the surface, and when the radiation clears we'll assault and recapture Gnomeregan with a force twice this size.

A short but sweet ending? Hardly. If the bomb is twenty six times as powerful as the one that first decimated Gnomeregan, as Thermaplugg claims, then we haven't won. After all, wasn't the radiation the exact reason why we haven't been able to take back Gnomeregan for good thus far. And now that there's twenty-six times as much of it, with all of it concentrated in the exact part the gnomes were trying to retake, how can we make any use of the city? How can Mekkatorque say that he holds the surface when the radiation would make going in there dangerous for him and his gnomes, but still safe for the irradiated residents of Gnomeregan? These plot holes make it very difficult to believe that Gnomeregan is any more in the Gnomes' grasp than it was before. This leaves the ending feeling pretty empty, and very disappointing. We put in all this work for so little payoff? And now Mekkatorque is telling us it was a success? Hardly a way to end the only thing to tide Alliance players over until Cataclysm.

Of course, the event wasn't a complete failure, or even a major one, or else I wouldn't have enjoyed it. With that said, let's move on to the good:

-Invincibility during the invasion
As we stormed Gnomeregan, Doc Cogspin cast the following spell on us: "Surgeon General's Warding: When the "Doc" is on the clock your health won't drop." In other words, as we stormed Gnomeregan, there was no risk of us dying. I know I've spoken against this kind of risk-less-ness in other areas of the game, but with a mobile event like Operation: Gnomeregan, death would have been a huge inconvenience. In the time it would have taken to run back to our corpse, Mekkatorque could have moved on way beyond where we were when we died, making finding the event difficult and making us miss crucial developments in this event's story. Since we can only participate in this even once, to make a player miss a large chunk of it would be quite cruel, so Blizzard did the right thing by putting Doc Cogspin in.

-Ending with an AoE-fest was a great way to see off the expansion where AoE reigned supreme.
Using AoE to bring everything down isn't going to be a viable tactic once Cataclysm hits, so it was only appropriate to see off AoE's dominance with a massive AoE-fest, which is exactly what Operation: Gnomeregan was. As the event wore on, more and more enemies attacked our motley crew, making focusing on one at a time simply impractical. It may have been mindless at times, but it was nice to give AoE one last "Hurrah!" before it went back to something we only use situationally.

-The quests were just plain fun and humorous.
The Gnomes' personality really shined through in these quests, from the fact that a machine was used to test potential speeches to the fact that the Motivate-a-tron could backfire and turn gnomes into critters, as well as the fact that one quest involved emotes. And while testing tanks we never got to drive did lead to disappointment, it was fun while we did it, and the scouting allowed for some nice views of Gnomeregan from the air. Of course, the final quest where we zerg-rushed our foes was all sorts of fun, and considering that it was Wrath of the Lich King's last hurrah, it's a nice way to end the expansion.

So what did you think of Operation: Gnomeregan? Were there any points I listed that you thought were good points when I listed them as bad points or vice-versa? Also, for my Horde-exclusive readers, did Zalazane's Fall suffer from similar problems and have similar high-points? And for those who play both sides, how did the two events compare?

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.