Running of the Gnomes

a "Small" online charity event in World of Warcraft

F.A.Q & Background info

What is this event? I thought it was an in game micro-holiday?The Running of the Gnomes is an event where the whole of the Warcraft community gathers on one singular server, Scarlet Crusade (or on Bloodsail Buccaneers for Wrath Classic), and rolls level 1 Gnomes to travel from the Gnome starting zone to Booty Bay to help raise awareness and funds for Charities that make an actual impact on Breast Cancer.What started out as a guild organized yearly migration was so popular with players and the community that Blizzard honored the event with a Micro-Holiday called The Great Gnomeregan Run that occurs yearly on the same date worldwide. The micro holiday provides players with a race course and NPCs to cheer them on!While the Micro-Holiday occurs everywhere the community and gathering of players is still held on only on Scarlet Crusade-USThe community event benefits charities we love, and gathers together people worldwide.Charity?Yes! The community event benefits charities we love, and gathers together people worldwide.This year, the Running of the Gnomes is supporting the Pink Fund!The Pink Fund is a charity that directly helps people who are in treatment for Breast Cancer with the unexpected costs and financial strains of Cancer beyond medical expenses.They hope to help reduce the burden of financial toxicity and stress placed on those getting unexpected and vital medical treatment so they can avoid a greater risk of mortality, have a higher quality of life and mental well-being, and improve their quality of cancer care. This is done via a 90-day grant to assist with things like housing, transportation, and, most importantly, insurance.You can donate to our fundraiser here!Does my character need to be level 1?No! But the idea is that the event is created for level 1 characters so people can log in and enjoy without too much setup on their end, especially with how many people attend!It was set up to be a can you make it to the end silly adventure to raise money 13 years ago for some friends. If you want to level to avoid the creatures along the road or help others avoid them, that’s okay, too!Why Gnomes?In Wrath of the Lich King Gnomes were one of the only Races with Pink Hair making it easy for everyone to coordinate.(Back then my guild also said no way to making 40 pink Mageweave shirts back then, lol, and then 150 people came the first year, and thank goodness we didn't go with shirts, that's a lotta shirts we would be making years later!!)They also fit the idea of something “Small” together adding up to something big when together.Why Breast Cancer, isn’t there a ton of attention for this already? And isn't this trivializing it?We all know October is breast cancer awareness month. Everyone’s been affected by cancer of some form, unfortunately.Using something cute, weird, and unusual makes starting a hard conversation easier sometimes. And the runs have come to provide a space for many of the community where they can yell into the void about loss and wins with cancer.Plus, we really realize that breast cancer isn’t just a "older woman's" issue like how it's been presented in the past.It truly can affect anyone, at any age. Knowing the signs of all types of cancers is important.
We try to work with charities and projects that don't always get as much attention as uhh...certain others, unfortunately.We feel even if the pink hair and cute outfits or all these Gnomes remind just one single person to check themselves to get a mammogram or encourage that family member who hears about to go in to the doctor and get any cancer screening, we've done a good job.Especially in a community where oftentimes many of us feel we’re too young for needing this sort of care.Plus it’s really hard to miss thousands of Gnomes doing anything, let alone thousands of Gnomes with the same colored hair stampeding through half a continent. Even out of game it gets people talking for a day or two.I want to help with the run!Tell your friends! Reshare our information on various social media platforms, talk about the groups we're supporting! Ask your friends to come with you!If you have another idea you can contact me, Dravvie.

Retail Info

Running of the Gnomes is October 12th on Scarlet Crusade-USThe Run leaves the starting zone at 4pm Pacific, 7pm Eastern, 11pm GMTThese times are race start time when everyone leaves the starting zone, so show up early and get an invite to one of our many guilds and hang out with the community and meet your fellow Gnomies!How to participate:Simply log in on the specified day on Scarlet Crusade in the Gnome Starting Zone, before the run start time and join us for the run. We’ll have the invites, and you just need to bring yourself!If you do not wish to use a fresh level 1 Gnome, you can simply change your Gnome's hair to Pink. Please keep the names tasteful...ish for an event that is all ages.Keep in mind this is a run to spark a conversation, honor others, do something fun, raise money. It's not a race-race. Staying together is a good fun option!Because the Gnome Run is very popular, I suggest showing up not 10 minutes before the run if you can help it, or joining our discord for days that we are pre-inviting people to guilds to snag an invite early.There will be absolutely no Cross Realm invites for this. You must be on Scarlet Crusade or it’s connected realm Feathermoon. I’m unable to facilitate people who are off realm. Simply roll a new character on the specified server and join in the fun that way!You can download and use a US trial account if you do not play World of Warcraft or your account is in the EU/Asia regions. If your account is inactive, you can use the Veteran Account Feature and play up to level 20! You may have to go through the intro questline if you do not have a max level character on the Trial or Veteran Accounts!Trial Account notes:Trial accounts cannot join guilds, but you can run along with us, and we do have some ways to count you all. You can also join our discord still!If you have not hit max level on a Trial or Vet Account you may have to do the new player scenario added in late BfA so plan accordingly.What about Tabards?
Tabards were made BoP in Legion and cannot be traded! You can buy them in Ironforge for less than 1g.You can mail yourself an Heirloom tabard from your other characters who have access to guild vendor or own one already. There are mailboxes in the starting zone.Pink Shirts?Every guild bank has 1,000s of pink shirts for you to withdraw and wear!We may also be passing them out in the starting zone!HashtagGnomeRun2024Where are you running?We will run from The Starting line, which appears in the Gnome starting zone on the day of the race, to Booty Bay.We will use the Tram from Ironforge to Stormwind. We will pause at set points for everyone to catch up, primarily after Stormwind's Gates into Elywnn Forest.

After Party?Yes! On both Retail and Classic we always head to Orgrimmar afterwards to give out kisses, hugs and licks to...whoever is the current head of the capitol! …We’ve licked a whole lot of Horde leaders over the last 13 years to be honest.Trading Post Objective?
This year two Trading Post objectives involve completing the micro holiday event in the spirit of the original event! One is is to simply complete the entire race quest where players run through gates from the Starting zone to Booty Bay just like we have always done, and the other is to do it while on a level 1-10 Gnome or Mechagnome while wearing a Pink Mageweave Shirt.

Guilds:

Because level 1s cannot join raid groups, and that would be a lot of raid groups anyhow, we opt to use guilds instead as we can coordinate more players via a guild. We will not be arranging any raid groups.A note about Racing Guilds:We ask that even while it’s hectic, or there’s multiple guilds, we ask that you only join the guilds we’ve confirmed for a variety of reasons:We use the guilds to give out directions during the runWe don’t want people to have unexpectedly negative experiences in a random guildOr be scammed with a false donation link.We do use them to have some idea of how many people are at the event too!Please do not make your own guilds. We will not be adding other guilds we are not in control of for the above reasons.You cannot pick your guilds, and if someone isn't inviting into one with the name you want, we won't be logging over to do so, they may be full, etc. It’s just whichever one we are currently inviting to when we are passing out invites! We’re sorry, and ask that you please help us by not leaving and joining guilds! There's thousands of you and only a few of us!We also will only be giving out invite powers to people we know as well.But! Whispering those of us spamming chat with instructions to do so the exact word INVITE will auto trigger our addon (thanks to Ellypse for making it!) to get you a guild invite unless you have a trial account and we're very fast at inviting!Guild List 2024:
Gnomes Race for a Cure
Gnomes Race Too
Gnome Three Racers
Gnomes Race Four Us All
Gnome Run Strikes Back
Gnome and the Furious Six
All Gnomes go to Seven
The Last Gnome Run
War for the Gnome Run
Gnome with the Pink Run
Gnomes to Eleven
Gnomemare Before XmasMore guilds will be announced on our social media and discord as needed if the guilds are overly full just before the event.

This year we will be raising funds for the Pink Fund again!!
The Pink Fund is a charity that directly helps people who are in treatment for Breast Cancer with the unexpected costs and financial strains of Cancer beyond medical expenses.They hope to help reduce the burden of financial toxicity and stress placed on those getting unexpected and vital medical treatment so they can avoid a greater risk of mortality, have a higher quality of life and mental well being and improve their quality of cancer care. This is done via a90 day grant to assist with things like housing, transportation and most importantly, insurance.For info about the Pink Fund, and how they use the donated funds, check out their website!Our all profits from our Merch Collection also directly benefits the Pink Fund as well!

What about the Touhy Vaccine?Thanks to our efforts, and the efforts of others, the Touhy Vaccine is actually in the next step of clinical Trials! Thanks to a grant form the Department of Defense, they have a lot more funding than a group like the Pink Fund might have, and in the future, we may revisit assisting their team.Dr. Touhy passed away before last year's Gnome Run, but those who worked with him at the Learner Research Institute are continuing to research a wide variety of different types of Cancers.If you wish to make a donation to help aid the Lerner Institute, we are setting up a small charitable donation page as well this week!

Classic

There is not a plan for a Classic run this year as we know everyone is really busy enjoying the wide variety of game modes already available, various other games, and preparing for the upcoming anniversary!We will let you know if we want to revisit the Classic Gnome Run in the future!