A Day Spent Horde-side

Today was the first time I’d actually sat down and managed the translation service for an extended period of time. Apparently just yesterday a new patch had been released that actually impacted our translation service somewhat. Blizzard now allows players to create both Horde and Alliance characters and play them on the same server. This changes our premise somewhat, since now we aren’t the only ones able to transcend the language barrier, as players can log off and log on as a different character in order to communicate across the language barrier (a lot of players told us, sometimes rudely, that our service is now obsolete with this new patch). On the contrary, however, I doubt this will change the service too much, since having two people manage two accounts allows for real time communication, which the patch doesn’t allow. Also, I think we still retain the niche as translators; one player remarked, “You guys must be really bored or something.” So I guess no one else is willing to sit there and translate for free while they could be playing.

I was advertising Horde-side today. No sooner had I started spamming the chat channel than people started asking questions. Only a few people actually acted on the instructions I gave in the advertisement (namely, to privately message us the name of the person they wanted to contact); most reacted first with incredulity (“How are you guys doing it?”). One of the first people I talked to, who was also more curious about the service than actually using it, was a character whom I’ll call Entor. We actually had a reasonably long chat that extended beyond a curt explanation of how the service worked. He talked about the fact that he actually did something similar before, by dual-boxing windows. I asked him how that went, and he told me that it usually wound up in people organizing very large fights against one another. Entor had some pretty interesting things to say about why he thought these very large vendettas were justified – namely, that people at one time or another were killed by members of the opposite faction, and have been using that ever since as justification for violence against the other side. He himself stated that he was willing to kill any “man, woman or child just because they’re Alliance”, especially if it would further a quest. That’s justification enough for him. Granted, he was saying it somewhat in jest, because it’s only a game (and also I’m taking everything he says with a grain of salt, since I don’t know MMORPGs well enough to know if this sentiment is widespread) but there’s something to be said about inter-faction racism created within the game. I guess I’ll have to see if other say the same.

On a lighter note, we mediated a very entertaining exchange (granted, with some profanity and topics I probably shouldn’t bring up in an academic blog) between some players who were clearly friends bantering through our service. I think they were Horde players who made Alliance accounts for the first time and were using us to talk to each other on the same channel. It’s nice to know that humor is another reason to use our translation service.

– Angy

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