This entry goes along with the entry about Choosing your Class on World of Warcraft and is part of the Getting Started series of entries, aimed towards folks who are logging into World of Warcraft for the first time, or who have already created a character but felt they did it somewhat randomly with no real reason for their choices.
Races and Their Factions
The first thing you should know about the races on World of Warcraft is that they make up the "good" or the "evil" side of two warring factions. These two factions make up the world and are battling against a third faction of ultimate evil, while also battling each other.
The "good" faction is called the Alliance and consists of Humans, Night Elves, Dwarves and Gnomes.
The "evil" faction is called the Horde and consists of Trolls, Orcs, Undead and Tauren.
Of course, I personally believe that "good" and "evil" depends on who you are and what circumstances you're under in a lot of cases, so let's just say I've used the Good and Evil labels just because they're easy.
Enough about philosophy, however - back to races on World of Warcraft (pre World of Warcraft expansion pack Burning Crusade).
As was mentioned in my entry about Choosing a Realm on World of Warcraft, the only time it really "matters" whether you select Alliance races or Horde races is when you have friends that play and you want to create a character that will be able to talk to them through in-game chat, as well as group with them to actually play the game. In that case, you'll need to agree with your friends whether you're going Alliance or Horde, and make your race decisions from there.
What Does My Race Choice Affect?
Other than communication with friends as mentioned above, two things are influenced by your race:
Where on the map you start as your first "home"
What classes you can choose
Home, Sweet Home
For many reasons, Blizzard has decided that different races should start on different parts of the World of Warcraft map. Some races start in the same spot as other races, but in general, each race has its own starting town. If you're familiar with the Warcraft story, you'll know why some races are together. If you're not familiar, watch the animations as the game goes on and you'll get familiar ;)
When you first start as an Orc or Troll, you'll start in the same town, Valley of Trials, but eventually in your travel you'll come across the home of the Tauren and the Undead as well. And if you wander into Alliance territory you can find the homes of those races as well.
Class Selection For Races
Some races are more suited for certain classes than others, to the point where World of Warcraft restricts certain classes from certain races. Tauren, for example, cannot be Mages, Priests or Rogues. Don't ask me why (except for the Rogue one - Tauren are too HUUUGE to be that nimble and silent when they move), that's just the way it is.
In Closing
Race choices are partially about whether you have friends playing or not, partially about what class of character you were wanting to play, and partially about whether you want to have any piece of role playing in your game.
Initially, I selected a Troll because they were ugly and that's what I was looking for.
After seeing and listening to the interesting and beautiful cinematic introduction to playing the character I had configured (the first time I logged into the world with my new character), I took some time to create a character from each race on different worlds in order to watch the introduction and listen to the story. Maybe you'll want to do the same!
Tags: getting started with world of warcraft