Tag: richard knaak

Warchief Election: Warriors Gonna War

On By VrykerionIn Warchief Election 20103 Comments

Hello everyone and welcome back to yet another exciting Warchief Election Debate! Last time we got some pretty awesome ratings thanks to the good people over WoW Insider (We promise not to say anything bad about you for like, six weeks.  I know we haven’t ever said anything about you before either, but this is like a guarantee.  Which is even better right?). Anyway, this week we’ve got a doozy.  It’s the polar opposite of last time – we’ve got two war minded candidates tonight and they look ready to kill, which means it HAS to be more interesting than two pacifists ‘duking’ it out for who doesn’t want to hurt more people.

As always, we have the Son of Hellscream himself, the slayer of…  (Um… Garrosh…  have you actually killed anything?  Uh huh.  What’s that?  Hmm.. okay.) The slayer of depression, the destroyer of da blues, Garrosh Hellscream! And also we have the privilege, nay the pleasure, of welcoming back the Dark Lady, Sylvanas Windrunner, queen of the forsaken and crusher of giant ice walls.  Tonight’s debate is brought to you by The Enterprise Company…  seriously?  I was just joking last time! Do they think this is going to work?  Oh well, “Enterprise Company.  Your source for everything the Venture Company has, only you can buy it from us because we’re totally not evil and totally not the Venture Company”  Can we just get on with the stinking debates?

QUESTION: Both of tonight’s candidates…

RICHARD KNAAK: I’m still here, a**hole.

Sorry Richard, totally forgot you were there… again.  Ahem.  Again the majority of our candidates tonight are in favor of war with the Alliance.  So the first question this evening is why do you think war is the best possible option as well as why your strategic plans are better than your opponents?

GARROSH: The Alliance is a threat to the Horde.  That’s all they are ever going to be.  No matter what we do, they will continue to see us as beasts and monsters that serve no other purpose but to killed off or kicked out until we no longer dwell in “their world.”  I think the fact that they still feel that way after everything our current warchief has done is proof enough that they want nothing else but to see us dead.  The best defense is a good offense.  We need to strike out and stake our claim in this world if we are ever going to have anything.  You think that those noble souls doing battle in Warsong Gulch are just playing around with a flag?

RICHARD KNAAK: Yes.

GARROSH: No! They are battling for the resources and control of the territory that those resources reside on for the Horde!  We need that lumber for the houses that our young sleep in!  We need it to defend our walls, and our loved ones! And the only way we will ever lay claim to the resources we need to survive is to take them from those who will not willingly give them.  So we fight the Alliance, not because we are blood shedding beasts but because we wish to survive!  I will not lay down my honor and roll over to die as a coward in some ditch while the Alliance takes everything from us. My father did not die so the Horde could live on their knees.  He died so we could be free people! Free from the bloodlust, the demons, our pasts, and the Alliance!

RICHARD KNAAK: Yes but like when I created Rhonin, I thought-

SYLVANAS: Surprisingly, I actually agree with Garrosh.  War with the Alliance is necessary if for no other reason than self-preservation.  Anyone who argues against self-preservation is an illogical idiot than deserves the fate that awaits them.  However, I don’t agree with Garrosh’s idea of brute strength beating down the doors of the Alliance and saying ‘gimme.’  No, to best the Alliance we are better off using subtlety.  A precise strike can do far more damage than constantly bludgeoning something over the head repeatedly.  That’s why I founded the Royal Apothecary Society.

GARROSH:  And didn’t that turn out peachy?

SYLVANAS: Quiet, you lap dog of Thrall.  ‘Everything our current warchief has done’?  Ha! Does he read you bed time stories now that daddy is dead?

GARROSH:  Hold your tongue, banshee.

SYLVANAS: You are in no place to order me, Hellscream.  The Society was founded with the idea of finding a way to efficiently and secretly eliminate our enemies without needing to lift anything more than a finger to push the button.  I see now that leaving Putress and Varimathras unsupervised was a mistake, one I don’t plan to make again.  But efficiency means less deaths for the Horde, more deaths for the Alliance and anything we can need can be at our disposal with a simple flick of the wrist and drop of well designed slime.

GARROSH:  There is no honor in that!  Honor comes from defeating your enemies head on and in a glorious battle!

RICHARD KNAAK: …kind of an outsider that could unite everyone under a single cause, be it horde or alliance or even humans and elves. Heck it was almost like I invented Robin Hood…

SYLVANAS: Your outdated senses of honor are useless here.  This is no time for wasting lives.

GARROSH: Like you have a life to waste.

RICHARD KNAAK: …And when Vereesa saw him for the first time, oh ho ho, there’s no avoiding a couple of half-elf kids at that point.

SYLVANAS: What. did. you. just. say.  ABOUT MY LITTLE SISTER?

RICHARD KNAAK: Nothing!

QUESTION: Having engaged in some rather questionable actions in the past, it has made some voters uneasy about putting you in charge of the Horde.  What can you say to defend your past actions and why should voters trust you?

GARROSH:  I admit that my actions in Northrend were… extreme.  But extreme actions is what the situation called for.  We faced two enemies in that frozen hell, one thought of us as nothing more than household vermin and the Scourge feared nothing, not even death.  There is no ‘merciful’ tactic against enemies like that.  You must not hesitate or else you give them the chance to take you by surprise.  Look at that pathetic human’s tournament in Icecrown! He left the doors right open for the Lich King to enter and doom us all and then acted surprised when he did just that.  That is the kind of weakness the Horde cannot afford anymore.  If that means we are brutal, then we shall be brutal.  If the humans want to hate us, then we will just have to make them fear us instead.  That is why I did what I had to in Northrend.  I regret nothing. My only sorrow is for those who judge me less for doing what had to be done to ensure the livelihood of the Horde.

SYLVANAS:  I will admit that trusting Varimathras was a mistake.  One of only a few that I will ever commit.  I know that now the only one worth trusting is myself.  That is why I chose to run for warchief.  To leave it in the hands of a half-cocked buffoon like Garrosh is too dangerous, Thrall is just leading us down a path of becoming slaves or getting killed, and I don’t even know what people are thinking to put a pile of sticks on the throne.  What are they expecting it to do when the Alliance marches through the gates of Orgrimmar?  Make a stew and hope they just leave because now they are full?  The Alliance is not a stray dog.  It will not love you just because you gave it some scraps.  If we are going to get things done, we need someone who knows from hard earned experience that you can’t trust anyone but yourself to do it right.

GARROSH: What about that plague that just happened to kill both living and undead targets?

SYLVANAS: A lack of oversight can cause many a malicious act to occur when one is not looking.  I can assure you that the new plague was designed solely for the purpose of destroying the Lich King and his forces.  Anything else is a product of Putress’ involvement.

GARROSH:  I smell fear, Windrunner.

SYLVANAS: And I smell Orc B.O.  Could you please go back to YOUR podium?

Well, I think we’ve heard just about enough of that for tonight.  I’d like to-

RICHARD KNAAK: One damn moment, you’ve drug me to these infernal debates twice, TWICE, now and not only have I been ridiculed and made a fool of but I have not once been given a chance to voice my opinion or present myself fairly to the voters.

Oh?  You think we’ve kept you down some how?  Okay, Richard, I’ll ask you a question.  Just you.  How about that?

RICHARD KNAAK: Excellent.  I have prepared a question just for this ocassion.

Wait… that’s not…  Oh fine! Give me that damn card.

RICHARD’S AWESOME QUESTION: Richard, what is your fantastic take on the issues?  How amazingly easily would it be for you to fix all of the Horde’s problems?  Are you really as awesome as they say, or are you awesome-er?

RICHARD KNAAK: Well, thank you for such a flattering question, I think first and foremost that –

Well, what do you know, that’s all we have time for tonight.

RICHARD KNAAK: WHAT?!

I’d like to thank our sponsors at… ugh…  Enterprise Company, “Strip mining your land in totally nice, safe ways cause we’re totally not the Venture Co.”  And thank you for tuning in!

RICHARD KNAAK: I will sue you, Vrykerion!

Next time we’ll have Basic Campfire chatting toe to toe with the Banshee Queen, Lady Sylvanas Windrunner.

RICHARD KNAAK: All of you can burn in hell!

Until next time folks! This is Vrykerion, saying take care of yourself and your main tank. (Can we turn Richard’s mic off?  Thanks.  He was really… WHOA! RICHARD! PUT THAT DOWN! PUT THAT–)

Warchief Election: Sticks and Orcs (and Mary Sues)

On By VrykerionIn Warchief Election 20105 Comments

Welcome one and all, back to the Warchief Election Debates! This week we settle the war of the pacifists. Two great advocates for diplomacy, understanding, and utter optimists when it comes to people of all races and origins… oh and Richard Knaak is here too. I’m sure he’ll have something to say about something. Anyway, besides Richard, we have our two leaders in the current polls: Thrall, the current warchief, and Basic Campfire, the people’s favorite, have come down here tonight to participate in this most epic debate.

As with last time we had Basic Campfire here, we’ve brought in former majordomo Executus to translate from firespeak. Welcome back to the blog, Executus. Also tonight’s sponsor for the debate is the Consortium, offering you quality everything at a what recent polls have stated is a decent price. Seriously? We’re getting sponsored by the Consortium? What’s next the Venture Company? By the titans, what happened to standards… What? We’re still on? Oh Fuuuueeellow members of the Horde, let’s start, shall we?

Question 1: Both of tonight’s candidates-

Richard Knaak: Excuse me! Um… Yes, There are three of us up here.

Sorry. The majority of tonight’s candidates are strong advocates for both diplomacy and peace in Azeroth. What can you say that would convince voters to choose you over your opponent… or Richard.

Basic Campfire (Translated from Firespeak): <The key to great diplomacy is having all the correct ingredients.  You need fresh ideas, a crisp and clean perspective, and a rich flavorful background of experiences.  I have spent time with any citizen of every faction who decided to take a single cooking lesson.  I have steamed fish with the Tuskarr, I have baked pie with the Alliance, and I have simmered sausage with the Goblins.  After all, all living things have the need to eat, and I have been there to provide them with that.  I doubt any of my competitors could make such a claim.>

Richard Knaak: Well in my experience-

Thrall: No offense, Campfire, but by those rigid standards, a fork is just as qualified to participate in peace talks.  What is needed is compassion.  I must call you on this Campfire and I apologize for it.  You help to feed all these people, because they call upon you to do it.  You are at their beck and call and while you may enjoy it, you are not actively choosing to do it.  This is not volunteering, this is pleasurable servitude, and it is certainly not compassion.  What is compassion?  Seeking peace and understanding between the factions, to and beyond the point that your own people are calling your actions near treasonous.  Where the tabloids assume you must be having some illicit affair because you engage in talks with the “enemy” that concern the fate of every living thing on the planet.  That is what I have done.  I have risked every morsel of my reputation and dignity on peace and not questioned it once.

Richard Knaak: Well that’s interesting because when I created-

Basic Campfire: <Thrall, allow me to disagree with your blatant attempts to cast yourself as some kind of messianic figure. Saying that the intent and risk is the important point in creating peace and dipolmacy, and I’m saying that’s just a bunch of steam.  You can garnish the topic with all the trimmings you want, but it comes down to the meat and potatoes: Is it helping?  If nothing else I can say that I’ve fed millions.  What can you say about your “compassion” and “sacrifices”?  That’s like saying all you need to boil water is water and wanting it to be hot! So you define compassion as having personal risk in the pursuit of helping others?  Well, let’s cut to the cheese here, I am a campfire.  When I cook for these people, I am set ablaze and burn for their food.>

Richard Knaak: Wait…  you aren’t always a campfire?  What stage in your life are you just logs?  Is that like limbo, or like an infant or something?

Basic Campfire: <I find that comment racist, sir.>

Thrall: No, the human has a point. I’m curious about this too.  Are you a campfire or are you logs that are being set on fire?

Basic Campfire: Crackle crackle pop crackle roar crackle pop!

Ahem, sorry about that folks, Executus has informed me that we may be facing fines if he translated what Basic Campfire just said.  Wait.  What fines? This is the internet!  Translate that!

Basic Campfire: <Why don’t you just put yourselves out!>

Executus…  What exactly was offensive about that? You seriously suck at this job.  Anyway, while hoping to maintain a civil tone here, let’s move on to question 2.

Question 2: times are getting tough, with big goblin cartels taking business from small horde companies and the war in Northrend consuming way more of the Horde’s resources than planned, what would you do to secure the jobs and financial stability of the Horde?

Thrall: As warchief, I have set forth a number of initiatives that will be available soon to create new jobs for the Horde.  Including allocating a fund to help start a small archeology school in Orgrimmar, and investing in a new technology that will allow the brave heroes of the Horde to “reforge” their equipment.  Both of those should provide an ample amount of new jobs for the Horde.  We’ve also been in talks with some members of the Bilgewater Cartel, in hopes that it will provide us an “in” to discussing ways to protect both Horde and goblin interests with all of the cartels.

Basic Campfire: <So your method of sizzling the economy is the burn the tax payer’s money?  The ideal method of solving this issue to bring the broth of personal responsibility to a boil and slowly mix in opportunity.  Once the good people of the Horde acknowledge that is just as much their own duty to worry about the economy as it is the warchief’s, we can began to reward individuals who are willing to do their part with tax breaks.  Not to increase taxes across the board in order to fund some undercooked “reforge” idea.>

Thrall: So your suggestion is that people just toughen up when it comes to the goblin cartels running them out of business?  Individual responsibility should be rewarded, but individual responsibility is not strong enough to battle a strong business presence like the goblin cartels.  The warchief has a duty to all, even in financial matters.

Basic Campfire: <I never suggested that people should simply toughen up against the cartels, because in my opinion the cartels have no business interfering with Horde businesses.  I would rather see the warchief spend their time working to strictly limit or completely cut off the goblin cartels from the Horde.  The Trade Princes have shown time and time again that they have no regard for the rights or concerns of other businesses, or even their customers.  That kind of overbearing and ruthless business presence is better cut off and put in with the scraps.>

Richard Knaak: Well, what I would do is send a charismatic and slightly misunderstood orc with a destiny even he doesn’t fully understand to go to Kezan and negotiate with the goblins to get them to ease off on hostile trade relations with the Horde.

Basic Campfire: <What happens if your plan doesn’t work?>

Richard Knaak: What do you mean?  I don’t understand the question.

Thrall: And what happens if this representative  of yours is fails to convince the goblins to do that?

Richard Knaak: I’m not sure I follow, what do you mean if my representative fails?  My people NEVER fail.  They are fail proof.

Thrall: …

Basic Campfire: <…>

And on that awkward silence, I’d like to end tonight’s debates.  Thank you gentlemen… and Richard – for an exciting and informatitive evening.  I’m sure everyone at home is buzzing with discussions between themselves over who they should cast their vote for now.  Once again, this debate was sponsered by the Consortium, your source for everything that you can buy and some things you can’t. I would like to thank our translator former Majordomo Executus and be sure to tune into the next Warchief debate where Garrosh and Sylvanas face off in a battle of hopefully just words, and hey maybe Richard will be there too.  Richard, wanna come to another debate?

Richard Knaak: I don’t deserve this mockery.

That’s a yes.  See you next time folks!

Double Dose of (Election) Threats

On By VrykerionIn Warchief Election 20104 Comments

Well, this is it folks.  The last two camps of the 2010 Warchief Elections have delivered their ads, and boy are they…  um…  well let’s call it ‘unique.’ The first one of these we got was a small paper flyer that was pushed through our mail slot the other day.  It’s got all the production quality of a college student with Photoshop and a nearby Kinko’s. So, well, here’s Richard Knaak’s ad:

We sent out people to every single Horde capital in order to get a response on this one.  Generally, all we got was “Who is Richard Knaak?” and “What in the nether is a retcon?”  We tried to explain to them that the Draenei were a retcon which was generally met with “No. The Draenei are demons.”  After our teams decided this was a lost cause we headed to Dalaran to ask Rhonin about this.  When we showed him the flyer, he had a concerned look on his face: “I don’t normally get involved in the politics of the different factions, but I don’t think he’s joking.”

What exactly would Knaak retcon if not elected?  One would assume he’d make himself the new warchief, but there are a number of other possibilities.  What if he changed the Horde so it was a run by a council of each races leaders and there was no warchief at the head of it all?  While it wouldn’t cater to desire to be all powerful, it would thoroughly change everything for no reason and upset the fans of the Horde, which would still be in line with much of Knaak’s M.O.

However, Knaak’s ad wasn’t the only one that we got to see this week.  We finally got to see “Daval Prestor” who apparently, after realizing that no one was buying that pseudonym twice, has dropped the name and just come in to the game as Deathwing proper.  His campaign statement is a bit on the forced side in my opinion:

At first, I thought the Vote or Die thing was just a throwback to that ‘get teens to vote’ thing a few years back, but then I remembered that it’s Deathwing.  That’s probably just an honest to goodness threat to voters.  While I don’t think this course of action is necessarily legal, I am not going to be the one to tell the giant dragon that has magma pouring out of his body.  Surprisingly, the voter support for this one was very strong.  Many people we talked to were very much in favor of not dying it turns out and they said that will definitely be considering that when they show up to vote.

Not surprisingly, the Forsaken are not taken with this ad – again. “We’re already dead!  What use is it to threaten us with it again?  Deathwing is obviously missing the point of what it is to be a walking corpse.”  says Ageron Kargal, a resident of the town of Brill, “I mean, when are the Forsaken are going to get a Warchief that respects and understands us?”  To date, while some Forsaken have been polled wanting to elect one candidate or another, many are undecided for this very reason.  Who can blame them?  With the exception of Basic Campfire, all the candidates are very much alive – a fact that sets them distinctly apart from the population of the Undercity.

However, following the release of Deathwing’s campaign ad, there was quite a stir in terms of the election.  It turns out there was a problem with Deathwing’s run for Warchief.  As the Horde by laws clearly state: “A potential Warchief must exist on this plane of existence in order to run.”  We sent a correspondent to Deepholm to ask the Destroyer for his opinion – but he was quickly devoured.  However, murdering tyrant or not, his name will be taken off the ballot come election due to this.  In response to this, Deathwing issued a press release that simply stated: “You want me on your plane?  Very well. I WILL BE THERE SOON.”  The press release appeared to have been written in blood.  Possibly that of our correspondent.

However this does leave an interesting twist on Election.  With Deathwing out of the running, there is a vacant slot on the ballot.  Will someone step forth the fill it?  Who would even try considering the massive amounts of support already given to Thrall and Basic Campfire?  Is there someone in Azeroth crazy enough to jump in to a losing race?  We shall see.

The Candidates have all released their ads, and with debate season quickly approaching what will can we expect from the four final candidates? Will someone snatch up that last open ballot position?  Keep it tuned in here to OddCraft as we are dedicated to bringing you up to date coverage of the Warchief Election!

Get Your Warchief Election 2010 Buttons!

On By VrykerionIn Warchief Election 20106 Comments

Earlier today I decided to blow off some steam at work by coming up with a series of campaign ads for different candidates for Warchief.  They turned out to be quite popular around the Twitter-sphere, so I thought I’d make up some campaign buttons for those who wanted to show their support!  Each one features one of the candidates: Thrall, Garrosh, Basic Campfire, Deathwing, or Richard Knaak, as well as a small slogan for their campaign.  Grab the one you want or a ZIP file of all 5 at the bottom and show support for your candidate of choice!  Also, if you use one on your blog, profile or websites, if you could point others to where to find their own it would be most appreciated. 😀