Barrens chat
The content of this article is not part of official Warcraft lore, but has nevertheless become part of the World of Warcraft culture or community.
Barrens chat is a condition which occurs when you have a large, sprawling area that is the primary means of leveling from 10-20.
"Barrens chat is like a stupidity centrifuge, distilling the unexpurgated banal thoughts of a thousand morons into a hardened impenetrable lump of smacktardery, spilling endlessly across the bottom of your screen."[1]
Now, Barrens chat has become all but extinct, as most "trolls", or players that enjoy provoking others into confrontations, spend their days in Trade chat in the main cities. People may talk occasionally, but with the introduction of the Dungeon Finder and Timewalking Campaigns, low-level Horde characters are no longer funneled through the same zone the way they used to in the early years of WoW - as such, the occurrences of Barrens chat are much rarer than in years past. To re-experience Barrens chat, the closest one may get is leveling in World of Warcraft: Classic.
A common Barrens chat example would be:
|
[1. General - Barrens] [Player 1] Anyone here like metalica? |
And so on. While some find it annoying, many older players remember Barrens chat with fond nostalgia. Barrens chat can be avoided by simply /leaving the general channel.
"Barrens chat" is not, however, restrained to quest-specific topics: puns and wordplay are common, as are discussions with (relatively) more depth, such as philosophy, physics, and subjects encompassing various areas of theoretical science.[citation needed]
Origins
Prior to many changes in leveling over the years, like the scaling in patch 7.3.5, tauren, orcs, and trolls would proceed to the Barrens after their respective starting areas. It was not uncommon for Forsaken to proceed to this area as well instead of heading to Silverpine Forest, a higher level zone on their continent, The Eastern Kingdoms. Consequently, most of the new Horde population was funneled there for a considerable amount of time. The Barrens is a large and desolate area, branching into other leveling areas such as Ashenvale, Stonetalon Mountains, Thousand Needles, and back to Durotar towards Orgrimmar. As a result, it was a massive focal point for even higher-level characters that were just passing through. The boredom that results in the long runs to questing areas and hand-ins contributed to the Barrens chat phenomenon.
Sadly, (or fortunately depending on how you view it) Barrens chat is extinct. Barrens chat was prevalent because most players during its heyday were brand new, and therefore inexperienced about the quests in the area, and more talkative. Barrens chat, however, lives on with the effort of those who speak there. Whenever people return there, conversations may start to simply reminisce. The mere mention of Chuck Norris incites a chain reaction of every Chuck Norris joke ever made.
This banter refers mainly to the chat in the Barrens, but can also refer to similar non-game-related chatter in other zones. In such cases, however, the name "Barrens chat" is replaced with a title appropriate to the specific zone.
"Many experienced players level their alternate characters in this zone and frequently make up stuff in general chat to drive the lower level characters into your classic "Barrens chat" nonsense it only takes a little bit to get them going." — Zodd, Thunderlord
Notes
- While "Barrens Chat" obviously refers to the Barrens General (/1) channel, when another channel (mainly the Trade and LFG channels) become infested with spam and nonsense talk about Chuck Norris or other silly topics, it is usually tagged temporarily as "Barrens Chat"
- Usage would be: "Remember yesterday when the Trade Channel turned into Barrens Chat?"
- Players being silly may be told to "Take it to the Barrens Chat", or "Get a Barrens Chatroom". The latter refers to the common phrase "Get a room!", used to people who act romantically in front of a crowd who may not want to watch. "Take it to the Barrens Chat" is the equivalent of "If you're going to be silly, go to the Barrens chat where you'll be accepted".
Common Barrens chat topics
- The biggest: Chuck Norris jokes (The most common Barrens chat topic. On some RP servers, good ol' Chuck is replaced with High Overlord Saurfang)
- The Alliance Outrunners
- "Where is Verog the Dervish?"
- "Where is Mankrik's Wife?"
- "Where is Mahren Skyseer?"
- "Where is Kranal Fiss?"
- "Where is
[Stolen Silver]?" - Murlocs
- Metallica
- "Your Mom"
- Mr. T (along with the famous Chuck Norris in a bar joke)
Bad cow puns
While it is usually restricted to tauren character names, Barrens chat sometimes saw an explosion of 'cow' puns and jokes, which often involved plays on various beef and butcher-related professions, and udder jokes as well.
Barrens Chat and blood elves
With the release of The Burning Crusade, newly created blood elves were granted an area that is much like the Barrens in the Ghostlands. As a medium-level starting area, for levels 10 - 20, the topics in chat were a bit more quest-related, but still brought out the Barrens nostalgia.
Barrens Chat and Wrath of the Lich King
With the release of Wrath of the Lich King introducing the death knight hero class starting at level 55, Hellfire Peninsula temporarily became the new version of Barrens Chat. This is because at the start of the expansion, almost everyone wanted to try out the new class, which led to player saturation and thus evolved into a Barrens Chat situation.
Alliance equivalent
On certain servers, the Goldshire chat could be seen as an "Alliance version" of Barrens chat. A popular hangout on RP serves for both new players and bored high-level players, Goldshire is generally avoided by serious players who do not wish to be aggravated by random /yell commands, fish-stick jokes, and ERPing. Duels are also commonplace.
Trivia
In the Blizzard Catalog, there is a shirt that reads: "I survived Barrens chat."
Some who play troll characters rephrase the quote "Stay away from the voodoo, mon" to "Stay away from the Barrens, mon".
See also
- Looking For Group - a formerly commonly-abused global chat channel. For a period after patch 1.11 all players were added to this channel by default, but this was disabled after the channel was heavily abused. The channel has been re-added with patch 2.1.0, and is accessible only via the Looking For Group interface. It is also possible to join by simply entering /join lookingforgroup into the chat interface. The Trade chat, which is common to all capital cities, is what is closest to the ancient LFG channel and is also commonly abused with random jokes. Since 3.3.0, the LFG channel is identical to Trade, being automatically joined and left upon entering and leaving a major city, and being inaccessible when not in a major city.