I miss being a Blood Elf . . .

I think I'm in the middle of learning an expensive lesson. Several months ago I made a fairly impulsive decision to faction and server transfer in order to get away from a few people in my guild. It wasn't quite a "rage transfer" as I'd been mulling it over for a while, but still pretty impulsive as I kind of just woke up one day and said "Screw it, I'm done". I could have just left the guild itself but I didn't want to deal with harassing whispers or anything of that nature. In addition, I felt like I could use a fresh start to clear my mind and take some time off. The small amount of time I played in Vanilla was as a Night Elf and I found myself starting to miss the streets of Stormwind and the trees of Darnassus, so I took the opportunity to not only change guilds and servers, but also factions.

Now, I've gotten pretty settled into Alliance life. I have a bank alt and vanity guild set up, mail storage mules and a few alts spread around in levels. As a tailor, I have (last I checked) around 2,000 bags of various sizes ready for the Monk invasion, as well as a host of enchanting mats, scrolls, low level BoE's, ore, etc. all waiting to be unleashed on the AH. I can quickly and easily find everything in Stormwind and have learned the fastest routes to all my favorite stomping grounds by way of Alliance cities and portals.

The problem is that, as a Warlock, my Alliance race choices are:

• Worgen - "Sniff Sniff Snort", voice work done by Patty and Selma, hate the way they run.
• Gnome - Creepy, clipping issues with gear and transmog.
• Dwarf - No . . . just no.
• Human - Bad animations, obnoxious gear/weapon size scaling, mitt hands.

I love Stormwind. It's so clean and relaxing compared to the festering dirt pile that is Orgrimmar. Varian, while a bit of a tool, is far more attractive as a faction leader than rawr-rawr-rage-Garrosh. Darnassus has a peaceful and natural feel that is much nicer than the (literal) rotting sewer of Undercity. The only Horde city that has ever appealed to me is Silvermoon, which is about as populated and, due to the lack of reforging, void storage and Cataclysm zone access, about as useful as Ratchet. As a whole, the Alliance is just more aesthetically pleasing to me than anything the Horde can offer.

But I love female Blood Elves. I love the way they run and jump. I love their combat and casting animations. I love the way armor proportions scale on them so that they don't have epic-shoulders-of doom. Female Humans, especially for melee classes who should be in good shape after all that running and weapon swinging, tend to be a bit on the dumpy side. Not just "round" or "average woman", but dumpy. Blood Elves are too skinny for some people, but to me they look fit and agile. I love their bored and condescending idle animations which are so fitting for an arrogant and power hungry Warlock. The indulgent and decadant lifestyle of Silvermoon nobility just always meshed well with my lock, who (at least in my head) cares only for "the finer things in life": Power, money and pleasure.

I farmed up an Orb of the Sin'dorei shortly after my faction transfer so that I could still be a Belf, if only for 5 minutes per hour, but what once was a "fix" for my addiction to Blood Elves is now only serving as a reminder of what used to be. More than ever, I find myself hanging out on my Horde alts on my old server instead of working on rep grinds with my main or otherwise getting ready for MoP.

Beyond that (and it seems such a small thing), I really want Edge of Agony and Dual-bladed Butcher for my Felguard.

The biggest thing preventing me from dropping the $55 to head back to my old server and faction is my guild. I've only been with them for a short time and that short time has been -very- productive, going from 6/8 Heroic (which seems to be the stumbling block for a lot of progression guilds) to getting a full clear of Heroic DS and my Savior of Azeroth title. I could find another guild pretty quickly, there's a late night 8/8H guild who is specifically looking for ranged DPS right now and I'm confident I'd be accepted, but leaving my current guild now feels like screwing over good people.

There's also the looming possiblity that the updated character models might just be amazing and that I'll enjoy playing a human for the first time.

5.0.4 is only in a matter of hours and I feel like I already know how this is going to end. I suppose the real question is when I'll give in.