WoW and lore

[Don]

I'm a fan of stories, no matter how poorly written. In the wake of the recent lore fiasco after Blizzard announced the new alliance race (which involved changing what happened to Sargeras, the guy who is responsible for like every evil that ever existed in the Warcraft universe), I think this is a good time for me to write about them. Blizzard has, in my mind, the worst lore out of any gaming company. There is more useful lesson to be learned about storytelling from a Megaman game (that is to say, next to nothing) compared to a Blizzard game (which is nothing).

Of course like almost every game writing company, we start with a foundation of story roughly equal to B-grade fanfiction writing. While I'm well aware they've plenty of real, quality authors writing about the Warcraft/Diablo/Starcraft universe, you can't improve a lousy foundation by throwing more writing power at it. If (insert your favorite author) is to write about Dragonball GT, the whole premise would still sound dumb. No one in the extended Star Wars universe was able to make any decent writing if they've to inherit horrible characters such as Admiral Daala, Kyp Durron, or Jar Jar Binks. Of course when Blizzard made their games it's not set out to be a literary masterpiece, so I don't hold them accountable. If you look at just the alliance stuff, it's almost reasonable. Aside from everything you ever kill from Van Cleef to Mor'ladim to everything else all have a secret sob story about how they're not really evil, there's no particular gaping holes of logic.

Now we move to the Horde. Everyone hates Trolls and Undead so they hate everyone else. That's fine. The Orcs are hypocrites who says they want peace while still effectively waging genocide on every non Horde species in the planet, but that's at least sort of okay because Orcs aren't supposed to be the good guys. Then we have the Tauren, which is obviously some combination of native americans combined with environmentalism. Never mind that they're an aberration of nature already (as far as I can tell Cenarius's children are centaurs, dryads, and keeper of the groves). You also have Taurens asking Undead for some plague help (Tarren Mill quests), Tauren planting bombs in Dwarven strongholds (Barren quests), and in general every quest that involves an animal goes something like "We Tauren coexist with the Great Earth Mother but every species of animal in the planet has a grudge against us so I need you to bring me their heads." Did I mention their honorable allies, the Orcs, are the worst deforesters in the Warcraft universe?

It's one thing to have self-serving propaganda when you're playing in the world of two opposing factions, but whenever asked about the story of their world, Blizzard always says something like 'well no one is really evil in our world they all have their reasons to fighting', which leads me to believe that they seriously believe that you've two factions basically killing everything else that moves on the planet and they're both somehow alright and really doing the right things. If some threat way more powerful than anything anyone has ever seen come up, this might cause a cease-fire for a few days and after the threat is defeated, both sides happily go back to killing each other again.

Blizzard has no guts to even say which side is wrong (most likely both), and despite the game promoting rampant racism and genocide, all this is brushed away under the 'there's no real evil' excuse. Now I don't think someone's going to become a racist for playing WoW, but if hating/killing every race that isn't yours (or at least allied with yours) isn't racism, then I'm not sure what is. Cowardice, to me, is the worst crime of story telling. Even in something like Death Note where it looks like the author actually believes wholesale murder of every person who's ever done something wrong is the way to bring a peaceful new world, at least she has the guts to say this is what I believe (via Kira) and I think this is right. Silent Fleet and Captain Tsubasa basically says every other nation is inferior to Japan. I don't agree with any of the ideas presented above, but at least one can appreciate people with radical ideas not afraid to say them.

Of course, all this 'nothing it totally evil' comes to bite Blizzard at the end with the Dreanai race joining the alliance, which are supposed to be descended from the Eredar, which is supposed to be totally evil, but are not totally evil anymore since they need another race on the Alliance side, except this contradicts the entire story around Sargeras, the Dark Titan, so they'd have to rewrite the Warcraft history to accomodate it!

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

For Metzen to have forgotten that the Eredar corrupted Sargeras (as he's confessed to have done) is a pretty horrendous screwup, considering he's Bliz's lore guy.

Your argument that Alliance lore is mostly reasonable while that of the Horde is ridiculous speaks of an Alliance bias on your behalf, IMO. Plot and character motivations on both sides are equally inconsistent (although not as universally bad as you paint them).

I don't get the impression of Blizzard that they want there to be no bad side. There are factions in the game that are pretty unequivocally bad - the burning legion and the scourge, for example. And there are sides that are more evil than others (the forsaken, for example, come close to being irredeemable; I imagine that the Blood Elves will be the same way). I do get the impression that they want there to be no good side, though. All of the races in WOW have done, continue to do, or intend to do evil. I think this makes the lore more compelling (the most goody-goody race in the game - the Tauren - have the most boring lore, also).

[Don]

I say Alliance has okay lore, because as a human I identify with the alliance. Therefore it is understandable that we bend propaganda and lore to serve our needs. I'm sorry but I don't see anyone is supposed to identify with the Horde when the Alliance is clearly meant to be *us*. All the alliance races are supposed to be *noble* and whether that's actually true or not isn't important. Since Alliance clearly takes the perspective of the player, it makes sense that we'd never put ourselves down, and the alliance lore reflects this way. Of course alliance are still doing questionable stuff but YOU are the one doing it and you're not going to bash yourself. With this perspective, it is not more bad or good compared to anything else out there.

The same thing breaks down with Horde because they don't identify with anything *good*. The Orcs and Taurens are basically pretending to be good, and while that is no different than the rest of the Alliance, they also have nothing that any player can identify with unless you're a shamanistic environmentalist. Taurens are especially bad because they try to be goody-goody but they're just as bad as anyone else, if not worse. Troll/Undead lore isn't particularly interesting but it is sensible. They're hated by most of the world and Undead are probably hated by their own allies so they hate everyone else too.

On the issue of no 'bad' faction, Horde is clearly 'bad' because they got the Forsaken. I don't see how you can look at what the Undead are up to and say they're genuinely good when they're trying to engineer a plague that'd wipe out of everything but themselves. Outside of that, yes the Horde is just hypocritical like the Alliance but don't have the luxury of being identifiable with the player. Because the player is clearly meant to identify with the Alliance, and if being good or bad is subjective then by definition I, the player, is never the bad guy, and this means Horde has to be the bad guys.

[Manshoon]

http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2 ... is_ev.html

Decent writeup on the whole "Horde is evil" thing here.

[Don]

The debate reminds me of the stuff I see with anime like "Tsugumi created the world of Death Note so anything she says that happens is the law" where despite everything look like it's modeled after the real world, we're supposed to ignore anything we know about how reality operates because the author says in this world, reality operates differently (e.g. US won't declare war on a nation with a guy who assassinated the president).

In the manga Dai-no-daiboken, there's a part where the all hope seems lost, and the author wrote that what happens after is really automatic because his characters seem to have a life of his own. He, and the reader, knows which one of the hero's friend is supposed to be the one who says there is still hope for humanity because that's what you expect them to do, and that's why he's proud of his work. The converse is also true. I like to write and often I'll find myself back into a corner, and even though as the author of my own story I can always make something happen because I said so, but I really can't unless I don't care about the integrity of the world and the characters I have set up. There are forces in the writing world, whether they exist internally or externally, that even the godlike author has to obey.

In fact, I think this author = god thing is what bothers me most about stories in most forms of entertainment, and it is also what stops stories in entertainment from being taken seriously. Why would you have faith in the validity of a story if it is justified merely because the author said so?

The irony is that something as simple as Dragonball is actually entirely consistent with itself. Of course Dragonball has very loose rules, most importantly anyone can always get more powerful with the right kind of training/miracle on their back. But that's why Dragonball can do whatever it wants and still make sense, while plenty of action-based entertainment fall flat on their face because they come up with more complicated rules to try to make it more entertaining, but invariably violate its own rules in order to write themselves out of a corner.

Another good example is EQ, which has openly embraced the 'new expansion bad guys trained harder than the last expansion bad guys and are therefore tougher' Dragonball philsophy about 4 years ago. Its writing isn't going to win any literary prizes but it always makes sense within its world even though it's only about the 10th time the world of EQ has discovered beings that make all the previous 9 world-destroying invaders look like nothing. I've a feeling Blizzard's going to write themselves into a corner they can't get out of because they insist so much on a coherent world of powerness, but obviously lacks the ability to maintain it. I mean, C'Thun is supposed to be the greatest threat to Azeroth that ever existed, which would mean he's more powerful than the Burning Legion... except next expansion is the Burning Crusade and doesn't involve the higher ups in Burning Legion (Archimonde and Kil'jaden I think) so you get some circular power level like random Burning Legion guy > C'Thun > leader of Burning Legion! What happens when Illiden, one of the most powerful entities in the Warcraft universe, is invaribaly defeated since he is supposed to be the end boss of the expansion? What about Arthas? And what comes after them? I don't think there can be any meaningful answers.

[Eric]

I'm not exactly looking forward to having Illidan on "Farm Status".

On a side-note, having the US retaliate on Japan for Kira killing the president would make no sense, yeah sure you could do it, but then the Japanese government would just put out the names and faces of as many US soldiers as it could and have Kira eliminate them all. It's one of the reasons the Japanese government didn't pursue Kira, they thought of him as their weapon.

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

I say Alliance has okay lore, because as a human I identify with the alliance.

I think the idea is that we're meant to be able to identify with all of the races, regardless of whatever superficial similarities they have with us.

I wouldn't call any of the races in WOW universally noble. I do find them all to be sympathetic, which is one of the reasons I dig the Warcraft series so much.

Because the player is clearly meant to identify with the Alliance, and if being good or bad is subjective then by definition I, the player, is never the bad guy, and this means Horde has to be the bad guys.

We may have to agree to disagree. I don't think we're meant to clearly identify with the Alliance at all, and your argument is rooted in that assumption.

[Don]

I checked the character creation again for the horde and it says something like "The horde consists of the brutal orcs, quick-witted Trolls, (forgot rest". The Alliance most definitely starts with "The Alliance consists of the noble humans". Brutal is not a word anyone would be proud to be identified with. The word Horde itself does not have a positive meaning.

On the subject of Death Note, the SPK is all hush-hush top secret stuff and no one is supposed to know the fact that the president was threatened. So when the president of the United State does die the only assumption you can make is that he died because he was going after Kira (note that this is the conclusion DN makes as well). If a nation openly supports a guy who killed the president of the United States, the US will most definitely declare war on them, in this world or any other one. DN is eerily similar to Silent Fleet where the Japanese can openly oppose the US and supporting what amounts to terrorist action without causing an international incident. A nation simply can't get away with killing the leader of a nation without starting a war unless they're significantly stronger than the nation whose leader just got killed.